And Then There's Dad

The Good Old Days

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:00:00 -0700

My two older children are now “school age,” my son in second grade, my daughter in kindergarten. So, at some level, they’re big kids. But there’s also a baby in the house, and while the little guy himself has never been anything but delightful, he’s had quite a strange effect on his siblings. These days, while most parents are trying to interest their growing kids in more advanced toys, I often find myself struggling just to get them to put down the baby’s stacking cups and act their age.

It started innocently enough: When I plowed deep into the kids’ closet to pull out their old baby toys, we all enjoyed reminiscing about which ones were their favorites, and how much they used to play with them. Some toys they remembered loving. Some, surprisingly, they had forgotten. My son asked me to demonstrate how he used to put the top of a soft stacking toy on his head in that special, cute way. Then he started doing it, over and over: “Daddy, is this what I did when I was a baby?” he would ask, as he batted the chicken-head around, all the while making nonsense baby noises. Then I reunited my daughter with her beloved toddler-era four-piece puzzles. You know the kind – where there’s an animal piece, and then an animal-shaped hole in the puzzle, painted to match the piece? Not so challenging for the average four-year-old. But she insisted on doing the puzzles herself to see how fast she could do them. Then she did them again. Then my son grabbed his stopwatch and challenged her to a race. Then they raced, he won, and they fought. Finally, back to acting their age.

Later this summer, as my son diligently read books to complete a book log and win prizes from the public library and a local book store, he started asking if the baby’s books “counted”—books like “Colors” and “Shapes.” No, they didn’t. Then, when school started and he had nightly reading assignments, he asked about the books again. But “Where’s Spot?” still didn’t count for second-grade homework.

It’s often been written about how nostalgic today’s self-centered adults are for their formative years, as if the Baby Boomers and the generation that followed them invented the longing for one’s childhood. That’s nonsense. When I watch my six- and four-year-olds rolling the baby’s cars, toppling his blocks, and throwing his plush balls around the house, I know that nostalgia for simpler times must be hard-wired into all of us.

Seeing them with their baby toys has also been a remarkable way to see how much they’ve grown. Every parent says they regret how fast the time goes by, how quickly the kids go from needy toddlers to willful preschoolers, and finally to independent kids. I see in my kids’ eyes that, at some level, they regret it too.

And so, when they ask to sit on my lap and read “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” now back on their bookshelf for the baby’s future use, or to play “Piggies” with their feet in the bath like I do for the baby, I give in. And we all try to recreate, at least for a few moments, the connection we shared when we first bonded.

I think we’ll all be sad to see this baby outgrow his toys.

It Takes a Village. But Not This One.

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 04:00:00 -0700

What’s the hottest trend in residential communities nationwide? According to the New York Times and real-estate magazines like Big Builder, it’s “age qualified” neighborhoods, where local laws designed to benefit older residents have been twisted to create massive developments with hardly a child in sight—and where residents lucky enough to get off the waiting list get the tax benefits of not having to pay for schools.

The citizens of these communities—elderly and otherwise—claim to relish their quiet open spaces, free from the pitter, the patter, and, yes, the stomp of little feet. They also say that they love children, or at least that they once did, but now they’d just prefer to be around people more like themselves. Still, something is lost in a community without children. I don’t mean to say that children, especially the neighbors’ children, are always so delightful to be around or endlessly entertaining. Any parent knows that they’re not. Just as any parent knows it would be foolish to argue that a town wouldn’t be somewhat more peaceful without them around.

No, what I think residents of these new villages are losing is the effect children can have on them. When there are children around, one watches one’s language. One drives more safely. One is asked more often to contribute to the community by kids involved in charitable events. One might even be called upon to share his or her experiences with the local young people. Or, like Mr. Wilson from “Dennis the Menace,” or Mr. Bleakman from “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” one might simply have to respond to a passing child asking, “Whatcha doing?” And what’s wrong with that? Who really wants to give up all interaction with a group of people who might actually be want to learn from you? To put it simply, when there are kids around, there’s more opportunity to be involved. And isn’t that just what the doctor recommends for today’s “active seniors”?

Happily, some of them have filled the prescription the idea. Seemingly in response to the wave of childless gated developments is an unusual community in western Massachusetts known as “Treehouse.” Several families with foster children have moved there so that the kids can interact with a large group of “honorary grandparents,” elderly men and women who also relocated from across the country for the opportunity to share their experience, time, and affection with the kids—and parents—who most need it. And just like the most exclusive age qualified neighborhoods, there’s even a waiting list.

Nice to see some members of the older generation still want to stay in the game.

Do They Think They're Better Than Us?

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Dire economic and health forecasts predict that for perhaps the first time in our country’s history, the next generation of Americans may not be as healthy or wealthy as their parents. That remains to be seen, of course. But even if our kids may not be richer than we are, we can still help them become better than we are, in as many ways as possible. For example, there are any number of things that I know my son will eventually do better than me, because he’s so much better at them than I was at his age—OK, OK, I was an awkward kid, but still.

At age 6, he’s already got a season of Little League under his belt: I never played a single game. He’s played in several chess tournaments; I didn’t compete in anything like that until middle school. He’s about to start learning the piano; my greatest accomplishment with the instrument was, after an hour of experimentation recently in my father-in-law’s basement, being able to locate the notes to the “Do-Re-Mi” scale from “The Sound of Music.” He takes a weekly ballet class and has already performed in a recital; the closest I ever came was standing in the back row as an extra in our high-school show.

Many parents and parenting columnists complain that the modern parent has overscheduled his children, dragging them from activity to activity to begin filling up the “extracurricular” space on their college applications as soon as possible. By doing so, the critics say, we’re depriving them of precious free time to explore their world and play outside.

I disagree. Every parent must resist reliving his childhood through his children, but when I think of how late I came to appreciate the value of making music, performing in public, or playing organized sports, I’m quite proud of opening those doors to him. He may give up ballet next year. The piano may never take. But he’ll still have had the experiences, and I’m sure he’ll be the better for it. About a year-and-a-half ago, my four-year-old daughter had the chance to handle and try to play a violin at a children’s fair. She loved it, and asked us about once a month since that day when she’d be able to begin lessons. She finally started last week. Before I became a parent, I’d have thought it ridiculous for any sane adult to take a four-year-old to a weekly violin lesson. Now I know better. Kids do need time for free play. They do need opportunities to explore their world independently. But when something catches their attention, parents must be ready to take action and give them the experiences they desire. No matter what else comes to pass in the years ahead, if we do that, the next generation will still have their chance to surpass us.

Other People's Children

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:00:00 -0700

There are a lot of ways to divide parents into two. There are the nervous parents and the relaxed parents, the sporty parents and the bookish parents, the organic chefs and the junk-food facilitators—but I think one of the most telling ones is between parents who take a sincere interest in other people’s children, and those who don’t. I wish this weren’t true, but I have to confess that I’m one of the latter.

That’s not to say I don’t pay attention to my children's friends at all. The boy who could already smack a baseball over the fence at age 6? Him I noticed. The girl who spoke up so confidently at every kindergarten class show? I couldn’t miss her. Still, I can’t say I necessarily wanted to hang out with either of those kids. But other parents always seem sincerely pleased to chat or roughhouse with my son or daughter when they come over for play dates. When other kids come to my apartment, I’m happy to see them, but I mostly just hope they won’t dump all of our toys on the floor. (Again.)

Do you remember the first time another parent chatting with you in the playground told you that all of the other parents in your class had already switched to organic milk for their kids? The knot in your stomach that, on some level, you’d just missed something fundamental about parenting, and now you wondered, So what’s wrong with me? That’s how I feel when a fellow class parent tells me about a story my son told them, or something they especially admire about my daughter’s personality, or even what color eyes my gang has. I don’t think they’re telling me these things because my kids are so superior. They’re not. But I do feel bad that I have no compliment to pay them back about their own kids. Somehow, I just haven’t been paying attention.

In the end, though, while I couldn’t tell you the eye color of any of my children’s friends, or which activities they do during the week, I do appreciate that they’ve decided to make my kids their friends, and there's nothing I could possibly admire them for more than that.

On the first day of first grade, for example, my son started at a new public school. For a variety of reasons, we’d switched him from the public school where he had spent kindergarten. I met him after school that day and escorted him to his new school’s playground, where he roamed about aimlessly, for what seemed like hours, nervously nibbling on his shirt collar, as I struggled to resist the urge to get up and play with him myself. Finally, a boy who had been in his nursery school class two years earlier strolled over, put his hand out, and asked my son to join him and some other boys playing with Pokemon cards. Finally my boy’s shoulders relaxed, and he jogged over to play. Now, THAT I noticed.

What I'd Scrapbook

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:00:00 -0700

The scrapbooking phenomenon keeps growing and growing, as mega-marketers like Martha Stewart urge the nation’s parents to move away from their mother’s cellophane-and-sticky-cardboard photo albums and closer to their great-grandmother’s lace-bordered family heirlooms.

As a work-at-home dad, I’ve taken on any number of traditional maternal roles, from choosing the kids’ daily clothes, to tending boo-boos, to fussing over balanced dinners. But still, I’m not scrapbooking. I am keeping all of my photos of the kids, in a giant Rubbermaid tub purchased from Home Depot and kept in the corner of the bedroom.

Not exactly what Martha had in mind. And yet, in a way, our entire apartment has become a scrapbook of the kids and their signature moments. Were it physically possible to fit everything between handmade paper covers, the book might look something like this:

1st page:

The first letter block my son, Fellow, put in his mouth so often that its entire coat of paint wore off. (Actually, I’ll have to remember to put this in the scrapbook when it comes back from the lead testing lab.)

2nd page:

A classic large cardboard stacking brick. My son made his first towers with the bricks when he was about nine months old—on Sept. 11, 2001. So he’ll know where he was.

3rd page:

The sheep and pig from the Fisher-Price farm play set. When my son was 2, I came up with a game in which he’d sit on my shoulders, and I’d put the pig and sheep on top of a picture frame. He’d then knock the animals off while I sang, “Oh, the sheep and pig and Fellow should be friends,” over and over again. When I’m old and barely mobile, I’ll want him to remember that I was actually once able to perform repetitive motions.

4th page:

The seashell-and-tinfoil bordered handmade picture frame my daughter made for me in preschool, with an adorable picture of her in a princess outfit inside. She later covered her photo with Disney Princess stickers, but I still remember how sweet she looked when she brought it home.

5th page:

The original cast album of “My Fair Lady.” My son once spent nine full months singing and dancing to “With a Little Bit of Luck,” each and every night of the week. Then he stopped, cold turkey. I’ll need to keep this on hand for when he brings his fiancée home to me.

6th page:

The 21 identical farm mazes my son completed in first grade, each copy taken from his classroom’s free time/enrichment box. It never bothered him that he’d completed the maze a dozen times before. He just kept doing it. When he starts rebelling in his teen years, I’ll be able to point to this maze as the object that made his self-confidence begin to grow out of control.

7th page:

A note my son once slipped to us under his bedroom door in the middle of a particularly grim timeout during kindergarten. It said, “I WT 2 CM OUT!” My response: My son can write! I still kept him in time out five minutes longer.

8th page:

The Scholastic Rhyming Dictionary. As part of his first-grade word study assignment each week, my son had to come up with a set of words rhyming with each of his words of the week. When he realized that he could just look up the words in the reference book, it was like he’d discovered penicillin. His first cheat sheet.

9th page:

My daughter’s bluebird ring. This tiny, slightly-too-large piece of jewelry has already been lost and found a dozen times. I just want to put it in the scrapbook so I’ll know where to find it.

10th page:

The trio of cardboard punch-out animals my daughter painted and decorated for her three pre-K teachers, and which I forgot to bring to class during the last week of school. She’s insisted on keeping them out on display ever since, a silent reproach to a forgetful daddy. To remind her one day that, unfortunately, she can never be too attentive a parent.

I Want the kids Menu

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I want the kids’ menu. There, I said it. As a parent, I listen to kids’ music, read kids’ books, play kids’ games, laugh at kids’ knock-knock jokes, and watch kids’ videos and TV shows—over and over again. And everyone tells me that doing all of that makes me a lovely, patient guy, worthy of praise. So why, then, when I go to a restaurant with my kids and other people’s kids, do the other adults at the table look down on me when I confess that I’d rather have the chicken fingers than the chicken marsala? Chicken fingers are delicious and I’ll put you on a lie detector right now if you try to tell me they aren’t. And after watching every episode of Baby Einstein 10 times, you know what? You’d better believe I’ve paid my dues. I’m sure the ratatouille is fantastic here. Just give me the mac-and-cheese.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Not only is it socially unacceptable to eat from the kids’ menu, it can also kill you. According to a study by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, adults who live with kids take in more fat—and more saturated fat—than regular adults. Who’s to blame? The kids, who apparently influence our eating habits as much if not more than we influence theirs. (Maybe because their favorite foods taste better?)

Sometimes, parenting seems like negotiating with North Korea. We seek a compromise position, and ask the other side to move closer to our position as we move closer to theirs. But they have no intention of playing by the rules. You’ll say, Yes, of course you can have hot dogs tonight—if you also have broccoli. Then they’ll gobble up the hot dogs, ignoring the vegetable—and then where are you?

Eating healthy requires a massive amount of willpower, as an adult. For six-year-olds? The concept doesn’t even exist. So parenting becomes the opposite of being pregnant—instead of eating for two, you’re resisting for two. Much as I want two of everything on the kids’ menu, I order the catch of the day—and require that the kids eat a cup of vegetable soup before they dig in to their fingers and fries.

Now, as we get up from the table, and I linger to pay the check, if a leftover finger should depart with me? Think of it as my tip.

The Jealous Type

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I am living in a House of Secrets. You probably are, too. There are people under your own roof right now, speaking to each other in their own code, sharing their secret passions, and keeping you out of it.

It began to dawn on me when my oldest son was about three, and my wife and I began splitting the responsibilities for bringing him to nursery school each day. One morning, I was walking him to school and noticed that every few seconds, he counted something, then returned to our conversation. Finally, I asked him what he was doing. “Counting dogs. Mommy and I count dogs every morning. The most so far is 23.”

No kidding? Not being a pet person—OK, not being an animal person—I’d never paid any attention to the pooches being walked alongside us in the morning. But his mother did, and now she had him counting them. Another day, at dinner, he told her he wanted to talk more about what happened when people died, which had apparently been a hot topic for them over several walks to school.

Worthwhile as their talks clearly were, it was still disconcerting to hear that he was talking about such unexpected things with someone other than me, even if it was his mother. It’s like you’ve loaded your iPod Shuffle with all of your favorite retro synth pop, and then you turn it on the next day and every other song is a country ballad. It’s still a great piece of equipment, the sound is still clear, but you’d never even considered the possibility of playing country music on it.

When our kids are born, we consider them a blank canvas we can fill with our ideas and our passions, but for better or worse, we’re never painting alone. First, there are our spouses. My wife talks to the kids about herbs, about the oceans and about fantasy summer vacations, and when I get them back, they’re changed. And then they go to school and friends add candy-colored shades of Pokemon and “High School Musical” to the canvas. The more they hear, the more secrets they’re made privvy to, the more detailed the picture gets. As a parent, you can respond in two ways: Become jealous that your brushstrokes are no longer in the foreground, or realize that if all that was on the canvas was what you had drawn, there would be too many bare spaces for your child’s own good.

I imagine that, years from now, when the canvas is finished, part of the fun will be seeing what I can still see from our walks to nursery school. In the meantime, I’ll begrudgingly do the right thing, and share the brush.

Oh, the Stories We Tell

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Becoming a parent brings a lot of surprises. One is the discovery that you suddenly have an audience passionately interested in your personal history, undramatic as it may be. My son and daughter absolutely hang on the stories I tell about my own childhood, and about how I interacted with my parents, particularly my late mother, whose company they themselves only enjoyed for a few years. They can tell you that she packed a cheese sandwich on pumpernickel and a box of raisins in my lunch box every day, that she let me walk to school by myself by the end of kindergarten, and that whenever she knew I was lying, she would tell me, “You’re full of old shoes.”

I think part of the fascination is that kids who don’t get to see much of their grandparents are looking for other ways to feel like part of their parents’ extended families. So they absorb whatever information they can get, and then feel grown-up when they can relate their own experiences to those stories. My son got a splinter last week, and warned me to make sure I didn’t do what I told him my mom once did—having failed to recognize a splinter in my hurt knee, she rubbed it with tender loving care until the wood became so deeply embedded that I eventually had to go the hospital for stitches. It wasn’t Mom’s best moment, of course, but the kids like how it shows that my parents were as flawed as they know their own dad is.

The interest extends to my siblings as well. When my daughter was a toddler and her crib was moved into my son’s bedroom, I told him how my big sister used to come and rub my head and back when I was a baby crying in the crib next to her room so I’d go back to sleep. Days later, he proudly told me how, one night when I’d slept through my daughter’s late-night crying, he got up and played a music box for her so she’d go back to sleep, “just like Auntie S. did for you, Daddy!” He’s rarely been more proud of himself.

You have to be careful how you use these stories. A couple of times, I’ve told the kids stories of youthful recklessness that have backfired. The kids know, for example, that during the Blizzard of 1978, my sister and I jumped out of our suburban second-story window onto a massive snowdrift against our house. So now whenever we get a few inches of snow, they’re ready to hurl themselves out of our sixth-story Manhattan apartment window.

There’s also the temptation, once you see how eager the kids are to live out their own versions of your childhood, to abuse the power of these stories. I’ve come close to telling the kids how, when I was a kid and my mother told me to brush my teeth, go to the potty and get into to bed, I always did it right away because I wanted to make her happy. But I can’t do it. I’m not sure the kids would believe me, for one thing, and besides, the true stories are too precious.

Nights at the Improv

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Let me begin by saying that I love parenting magazines. They provide a ton of useful information each month. For example, I just read five different magazines’ takes on sunscreen, and each will make me a better prepared dad this summer. I’ve also made a good deal of my living writing articles for the magazines over the past six years.

But I do have a slight beef with a certain type of parenting-magazine article. You know the ones. They have titles like, “How to Survive the Worst Tantrums EVER,” or “How to Get the Worst Sleepers EVER to Bed.” It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the advice in the articles. The advice is almost always right on. No, what bothers me are the sidebars that give me a “script” to use with my kids, like, when cleaning up, “You put away everything red, and Daddy will put away everything else,” or, for dealing with whining, the classic, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

I understand why people use the scripts. They make us feel more confident, help us respond more quickly in a crisis, and coming from the mouths of a disciplined mom or dad, they give children the consistency they thrive on. But to me, they don’t feel true. They’re not me. I believe that half the challenge, and most of the satisfaction in being a parent is coming up with the right words yourself, or at least trying.

Professional comedians tell aspiring stand-ups, “Never let them see you sweat.” But I think kids appreciate seeing some perspiration. I don’t mind them seeing me stop and think before responding to spilled milk or splashed bathwater. I want them to know that whatever they hear me say, it’s really me talking. You’ll never have a more attentive audience for your improvisations. Why not see how you can handle the stage?

Besides, one of my core beliefs about parenting is that it’s always situational. Is the kids’ room a mess at 4:00, when they’re wide awake and eager to get outside and play baseball? Then you can give them an incentive: No one’s going out to play until you clean up. But if the room is a mess at 9:00 at night after a long, tiring day? Maybe a different approach is needed: Just put that yellow Matchbox car in your special box before you go to bed so if you wake up in the middle of the night, you won’t step on it, roll across the room, smash into my bedroom door, and wake me up. Similarly,if your four-year-old comes out of her room at 10:00 with a sad look on her face, it might be time to improvise some baby talk: Does Sweetie need a snuggle with Daddy? But is she coming out with a sheepish, mischievous smile? Then it might be better to try something along the lines of: Go back to bed!

In parenting, as in life, the same approach, the same words, are not going to work every time, or with every audience. And sometimes you need to go off the script entirely. When that same four-year-old is rolling around on the couch, whining because you’ve told her to go the bathroom and then get to bed, sometimes the best response is to grab her by her feet and swing her upside-down while tickling her tummy. By the time she stops laughing, she’ll find she’s been carried to the bathroom. And she’ll have forgotten why she was grumpy.

To me, that’s a move worthy of Best Screenplay.

Love the Team, Not the Player

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I’m raising my six-year-old son, Fellow, to be a sports fan—specifically, a Boston sports fan, even though we live in New York City. And so far it’s gone pretty well. OK, it’s gone so well that he’s become a bit obsessive about it—not that I have a problem with his Red Sox cap, his Red Sox lunchbox, or his Red Sox school folders. But there’s one thing I won’t get for him, and that’s a team jersey with any specific player’s name or number on it.

It’s a decision I made consciously when he was still a toddler, cruising around in his Nomar Garciaparra Number 5 onesie. Then news broke of the rape charges against Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. To that point in his career, Bryant had been seen as maybe a ball hog, but otherwise certainly a law-abiding player, at least. And while his career has again taken off since the charges were dismissed, my feeling about the situation remains my feeling today: “Man, am I glad Fellow doesn’t have a Kobe Bryant shirt.”

I love sports, and I love following sports. I have since I was a kid following my big brother to Fenway Park. But as a fan, and a journalist, I’ve learned over the years that sports stars can be at least as personally flawed as everyone else and that you never know which guy took steroids, alienated his teammates, cheated on his wife, or hit his kids. Other than rock stars, there are few other people in society whose names are regularly found on the backs of their fans’ shirts, and we all know we’re taking a flyer when we put on an Ozzy Osbourne tee. But 6-year-old kids think their favorite athletes are perfect. I know I did. And like me, Fellow will find out soon enough that they’re not. In the interim, I just want to save him the shame of wearing a guy’s T-shirt while watching TV and asking why the police are arresting one of his heroes.

A team shirt will do just fine for now, thanks.

We the Parents

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0700

If recent news reports are to be believed, thousands of parents across the country are busily writing up “family constitutions.” The idea has been promoted by no less an authority than Stephen Covey, of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” fame. Like all parents, I have my own set of rules. But it had never occurred to me actually to put them to paper in a formal way. I’d always assumed that if I were ever to write out a specific set of rules, then I’d face intense resistance whenever I felt a need to add to it. (Also, two of my three children can’t read yet.)

But the real issue is expectations. I demand that the kids adhere to what I call the non-negotiables—hold hands in the street, stay out of the medicine cabinet, don’t drop the baby—at all times and without argument. And there’s an unspoken understanding that even if they may not follow all of my other expectations—don’t jump on the bed, put on a sweater, talk to grandma—100% of the time, I can live with that, as long as I know that they know the difference.

Still, keeping an open mind, I’ve decided to give writing a constitution a try. I checked out some of the models available on the Web, although I found that they focus more on core principles and the process of setting rules rather than the specifics of who gets to use the bathroom first. And I wonder how far that really gets you. Sure, you can write, “We are a family that respects each other’s space,” but I know that when my daughter catches my son cheating at Sorry, someone’s space is about to get disrespected. That’s life. And so Covey correctly warns would-be Founding Fathers that “a mission statement without specifics is just platitudinous.” Keeping his advice in mind, I drafted a set of rules that speaks to the core values of my family. Fellow Dads, feel free to print it out and post it in your own home:

Our Family Constitution

The following laws are to be followed by all citizens of the family, without expectation of treats, marbles, or gold-star stickers on charts:

Article One. Use forks at the table.

Article Two. Keep water in the bathtub.

Article Three. Wear underwear to bed.

Article Four. Don’t hit so much, if you can avoid it.

Article Five. I think that’s enough with the TV for today.

Article Six. Come on, why can’t you put your shoes away?

Someday All This Will Be Yours-- Except the Yaz Card

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0700

By all accounts, collecting things is a dying hobby, with few young people today interested in stockpiling stamps or shoeboxing baseball cards. Of the 37 million Americans who identified themselves as collectors in 2000, just 11% were under the age of 36. This is partly because there no longer appears to be any money in it for the average collector: The bottom has fallen out of the resale market for traditional boys’ collectibles like comic books and sports cards. Also, producers have flooded the market with ever-more-elaborate and expensive holographic designs, turning off aspiring young collectors. But perhaps the fault really lies with we Dads.

You now who you are. You collected baseball cards for years as a kid, but several years ago, you sold off all of your “common” (not valuable) cards, holding onto only your best pieces—rookie cards of future Hall of Famers, Red Sox legends, and other stars and oddities—all of which now sit securely inside plastic sheets at the top of the closet.

I know you because I am you. I was thrilled when my six-year-old son, Fellow, began taking a serious—OK, borderline obsessive—interest in my old cards this fall, and I promised him that all of my cards would be his one day. Relatives and

friends found out about his interest just before his birthday and their gifts helped him build a collection of a few hundred new cards in a matter of months. But what he really wanted was my collection—right now. My mid-70s Carl Yastrzemski card became his white whale. But I would have none of it.

Unintentionally, a mercenary model of obsessive preservation was the only model for collecting I had given him. Although I assured him that it was OK with me if he stored his own cards any way he saw fit, even if rubber bands, he insists on putting each in a plastic sheet inside one of his binders. When he and his best friend get together to trade their cards, they always check with their dads first to make sure they aren’t trading away anything that might have value someday. And though we try to resist, both of us fathers sometimes advise against certain trades, though we know that very few of the cards they constantly handle today will have much value tomorrow.

One morning, as my wife walked Fellow to school, she asked him about his baseball cards. “Is it a lot of fun collecting baseball cards?” she asked him. She told me that he turned to her with shock and said, “No, mommy! Collecting baseball cards is work! It’s a lot of hard work!” And I had to tell her that I was sorry about that.

Chips off a Chipped Block

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I think we can all agree that one of the greatest things about parenting young children is that, well, they love us, and that unlike tweens and teens, they just can’t help showing it. Outside of any quarterbacks or head cheerleaders out there, how many of us ever imagined we’d have the experience of spending our days with people who wanted nothing more than to copy our every quirk and personality trait? (Of course, we do literally have to make these people ourselves, but, hey, any way we can get it. . .)

Unfortunately, it’s also a double-edged sword. As much of an ego boost as it is to hear your kids use your catch phrases—I love hearing my son begin sentences, “As it turns out”—our kids can also give us a harsh look in the mirror when they copy our less desirable habits.

When I see my kids biting their nails, sneaking an extra cookie, lazing in front of the TV, or even yelling at each other, I know that part of that comes from me. (There was a brief period when my son, at age 3 or 4, would shout, “Damage!” every time something went wrong, fortunately mispronouncing a curse I often let loose with.)

Parenting magazines often write about this subject, because it’s a constant worry for parents, and their writers tend to advise us to simply model better behavior, or better values. But if I had it in me to model better behavior, don’t you think I’d have been a better person all along? In a way, seeing our kids follow our missteps reminds all of us how difficult it is to live the way we want, to be the kind of people we know we ought to be. But look around: Everyone else’s kids are imperfect, too—and where do they get it from?

I see my son procrastinating most nights instead of sitting right down to do his homework, and as a freelance writer, I certainly can recognize where that comes from—although since he’s six, he tends to put off tasks by running around the house and jumping up and down, which is healthier than my preferred method—housecleaning.

Sure, we’d all like to improve ourselves, we’d all like to be better, and it’s damage hard to do it because, in many ways, we are who we are. But we’re lucky—because there’s no better motivation than having kids to get you to try.

How will you know you’re getting through? When your curious kids start asking you why you’re breaking with your routine: Daddy, why are you eating a bowl of fruit? Why are you going outside to run? Why are you at your desk so early in the morning?

Because I want to be healthier. Because I don’t want to worry about work. Because I want to spend more time with you. But most of all, because I want you to at least learn to try.

The Gender-Neutral Fellow

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Hi, everyone. My name is Gary, and my son loves ballet.

Actually, like many six-year-old boys, my son, Fellow, also loves baseball, rockets, and Tag. But they compete for his attention with ballet, Daisy Meadows’ fairy books—and a stuffed animal that plays “It’s Raining Men” whenever he squeezes its paw. Do I worry about his “masculinity”? Not at all. But I am fascinated to see how he’s choosing activities during what I suspect—what I fear—may be a brief window in which peer pressure and gender stereotypes are not yet influencing his decisions.

Let’s consider the ballet. Three years ago, I was late registering him for swim lessons at our local community center. But he still wanted a Sunday morning activity, and he certainly loved to dance around, so, I asked him, How about ballet? And although he was the only boy in the class, he loved it—and never returned, because each following season, I made the deadline to sign up for swimming.

Then, this winter, out of the blue, he started asking—demanding—that I find him a ballet class. He wanted to dance. So I started looking around and discovered that here in New York City—and, as it happens, in many other cities—ballet companies offer single-sex lessons to young boys—for free. I asked around a little and learned, unsurprisingly, that the schools have difficulty attracting young boys to their studios—and even more difficulty holding onto the boys they do attract. But they’re all eventually going to need some boys around, when all those ballerinas turn 13 or 14 and need someone to throw them around. So the free all-boy classes—each is carefully named something semi-macho, like “Athletic Dance” or “Dance Sport”—are meant to make the boys comfortable leaping and spinning, out of sight of girls, and without realizing that they’re actually doing classical ballet moves.

Surprisingly, the only kids we’ve heard give Fellow a hard time for dancing are his female public school classmates, who insist that ballet is for girls, and are suspicious of any boy intruding on their space.

As for the fairy books—Meadows has written multiple series of volumes about a variety of fairies. Some are different colors, some control different aspects of the weather, and often they need the help of human girls to help them overcome the plots of evil Jack Frost. Fellow had been working his way through the “Magic Tree House” books—like seemingly every other early-elementary student in the country—when one day his little sister begged him to read one of the “Rainbow” fairy books to her. Quickly, he was hooked, and read every book in the series, despite the fact that there wasn’t a single male character to be found (not counting the king of the fairies, but he rarely leaves his throne). Fellow now trades the books with girls—no boys—in his first-grade class.

Which is fine with me. The books aren’t half bad, and I hope he and I can get through all of them before the guys in his class catch on and start teasing him for reading them. Don’t tell anyone, but I'm kind of interested in how the story ends.

Tiny Resume

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Here in New York City, where there's intense competition for limited slots in private nursery schools and kindergartens--and more than a few public programs as well--admissions directors have been complaining of the lengths parents have gone to with the hope of selling their children to schools. If the stories are to be believed, a number of striving parents have hired freelance consultants to write admissions essays, prepared DVDs and other multimedia packages, and a few of them have even created resumes for their two- and three-year-old children. One admissions officer, however, told a local paper that a toddler resume is a “huge black mark” against a family. I certainly wish they had told me that before I went to the trouble of preparing this CV for my four-year-old daughter:

TINY GIRL

212. 555. 1212 tiny@girl.com

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

Big City Summer Day Camp

Summer 2005 and 2006

Participant in five-mornings-a-week day camp. Showed exceptional ability in finger-painting. (Portfolio available upon request.) Never “started it.” (See attached affidavit from head counselor.)

Big City Nursery School

Fall 2005-Spring 2006

Student in three-day-a-week academic program. Separated easily (if not eagerly) from parents. Regularly filled entire paper with crayon drawings. (Digital scans available upon request.) Regularly outraced classmates to meeting area, and consistently sat “criss cross apple sauce” style. (Can be confirmed by instructor upon request.)

Big City Jump!

Fall 2003-Spring 2005

Active participant in weekly music-and-movement program. Excelled at triangle, ankle bell, and “bouncy ball.” (See accompanying DVD.)

SKILLS

Speed

* Brushes teeth each night in under 10 seconds.

Attention to Detail

* Empties her entire dresser every morning to choose an outfit.

Durability

* Has fallen off a variety of swings, slides, and bunk beds, all without permanent injury.

Literacy

* Could spell “TV” at age 2.

Resourceful

* Always finds a place to pee if bathroom is occupied; prefers father’s bathtub.

EXHIBITIONS

Drevitch Family Refrigerator, Group Show, Fall 2006

* Along with her brother, displayed work created in a variety of media in area of high foot traffic. (See attached art reviews by Nanny, Grandma, and Suburban Aunt.)

REFERENCES

Available upon request.

Pride. . . or Punishment?

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Sometimes, your kids do things so beyond the pale that the punishments are clear. Hit your sister? Imperil the baby? Throw food? Time out for the first offense, loss of a privilege for subsequent offenses. But sometimes, one of them will do something that, although you know you ought to punish them for it, also makes you step back and, at some level, admire what they’ve accomplished. I file these under the category of Pride . . . or Punishment.

The classic example for me occurred two years ago during the major-league playoffs, when I was tuned into every televised Red Sox game, but my then-four-year-old son was supposed to be in bed. So why, then, did he come out to the living room an hour-and-a-half after bedtime one night to ask if I had seen a home run? Because he’d located the game on the set in his room and had been watching it with the sound muted, until his enthusiasm for the Sox got the better of him and he rushed out to inadvertently turn himself in. So, would it be Pride. . . or Punishment? Are you kidding? Pride. This was the 21st century equivalent of listening to the game on the transistor radio under your covers. I just smiled and told him to “go back to bed.”

More recently, that now six-year-old son impressively taught himself how to play Texas Hold ‘Em on the GameBoy cartridge an uncle had (regrettably) given him. However, he then secretly plotted to sneak the GameBoy into his bed by hiding it under the stepstool his sister uses to reach the sink in their bathroom. I uncovered his plan, although I had to admit it was creative. Pride. . . or Punishment? Punishment: Loss of the GameBoy for three days (and some Hold ‘Em practice for Dad).

Then, just last week, hitting baseballs near his sister’s elementary school, he popped a foul ball over the fence between the playground and the school building. I was ready to write off the ball, but he insisted he could get around the fence and fetch it. I told him not to try, but he ignored me and he ran off, climbed one section of fence, crawled under another, and retrieved the ball. All in all, a pretty good display of agility. Still, I had told him not to. Was it Pride. . . or Punishment? A draw. I thanked him for the ball, but told him he needed to listen to me in the future. If he did it again, we’d leave the playground immediately.

And then I looked around to see if any of the other dads had seen how well he had scaled that fence.

The Jujitsu Kids

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0700

My kids have never been to Japan, or to a single martial arts class, for that matter. But they have mastered the ancient Japanese method of jujitsu, or defending oneself without weapons by using an adversary’s strength and weight to disable him. Well, the kids face no stronger or heavier adversary than their father and they expertly and consistently use jujitsu to keep me from disciplining them.

Like many four-year-olds, my daughter—let’s call her Tiny—makes it as difficult as possible to tell her if she’s done something wrong:

“Tiny, you can’t dump all the princess dresses from your costume bag out on the floor and then not put any of them away!”

“I didn’t put them away because. . . my leg hurts!”

“Tiny, go back to the bathroom and wash your hands!”

“Daddy, don’t you know that you give me a headache when you tell me those things? Don’t talk to me!”

Like any skilled combatant, Tiny recognizes when her actions call for stronger discipline, and increases her resistance, with well-executed crying tantrums that last well beyond my capacity to remain upset at her. So if something goes wrong as we prepare to leave the house for school or a play date, I often check the clock to calculate if I have enough time to tell her she did the wrong thing and then wait out her response. As often as not, I don’t bother.

And then there’s my six-year-old son—let’s call him Fellow. He’s generally much better about being corrected, and does the right thing soon after figuring out he won’t get away with the wrong thing. That’s not to say he’s above using jujitsu when he needs to.

Fellow has developed a love of baseball cards and knows that I keep my own most prized cards out of reach at the top of my closet. One night, as my wife and I prepared to leave him with a sitter, he begged me to take them down and let him look at them while we were out. Against my better judgment, I agreed, but made him promise not to take any cards out of their protective plastic sheets. And yet the next morning I found that he’d replaced dozens of my cards with his own relatively worthless ones. I sat down next to him and said, calmly, “Fellow, I need to talk to you about my baseball cards.” He immediately jumped up and ran to his bed. I followed him back there—moments later—but found that, incredibly, he was already asleep. I have no idea how he did it, but he stayed there, sound asleep, until late the next morning. For one night, at least, he was the jujitsu master and I, the humble grasshopper.

Emotional-Support Fellow

Tue, 15 May 2007 04:00:00 -0700

We’ve all heard of service animals, such as dogs that guide the blind, deaf, or disabled. Our kids read books about the pets, and we point them out admiringly as we walk down the street, pleased to be teaching a valuable lesson about community and tolerance. But there’s another, less well-known, kind of service pet—emotional-support animals. According to a recent New York Times article, doctors have prescribed animals “for psychological or emotional support” for years, maintaining that the pets offer their owners “longer lives and less stress.” The federal Department of Transportation, in fact, requires that airlines accommodate people who need their pets by their side for emotional support as they travel. If you’re like me--and it turns out, according to the Times piece, that many landlords, hotel and restaurant owners are just like me—you might be a bit dubious about people who insist on a right to bring emotional-support dogs, cats, monkeys, miniature horses, ducks, and goats—yes, goats—into other peoples’ homes or businesses.

Still, I’m not going to protest anyone’s right to take a duck to dinner if it’s the only way to ensure they won’t go postal if the soup is cold. To the contrary: I’d argue my own right to take my emotional-support child with me wherever I go.

What if federal law recognized my need to bring my six-year-old son, Fellow, with me whenever I might face a stressful situation? I know that his presence might have made a big difference on a recent Amtrak trip from Washington to New York, when I discovered that the railroad’s staff had incorrectly quoted a trip’s departure time, track, and price, causing me to miss my train, spend an afternoon trapped at the station, and pay $40 extra for the privilege. Had Fellow been there, I’m positive I’d have limited the extent and volume of my questioning of the clerk’s own parents’ abilities, causing less stress for everyone involved.

My emotional-support Fellow would also be critical to my well being at work. If a presentation began to go awry, I know I could count on him to relieve the tension by calling out, “Great idea, Daddy!” On job interviews, instead of facing an awkward silence when I would ask if a company was actually serious about its salary structure, he’d smooth things over by saying, “Daddy, you’re so funny!” At pickup basketball games, when I would collapse to the floor in a heap after missing a lay-up, I could count on him to call out, “Good shot, Daddy!” giving me the boost I’d need to keep from limping off the court in humiliation, never to return.

I’m calling my doctor for a prescription now—you may want to do the same. After all, who says a child can’t do a dog’s job?

The Number

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 04:00:00 -0700

My friends who work on Wall Street sometimes talk about their “number.” You know the one—the amount of money they believe they need to have stashed away to be able to walk away from their high-finance jobs. As a parent of three rapidly growing small children, I have my own “number”—the age at which all of them will have outgrown snuggling with me. Of course, if recent magazine articles and message-board complaints are to be believed, a lot of mothers—to say nothing of fathers—have been getting strange looks from passersby when they’re caught snuggling with their nearly-grown children. But I admire their public displays of affection. In fact, I’ve been studying them.

Like an amateur anthropologist, I’ve begun closely observing friends and relatives with children older than mine, to see how old kids can get and still be comfortable sitting on their parents’ laps or looking to them for a hug. I was especially encouraged to see one independent-minded 12-year-old niece recently perched on her mother’s lap as her mom stroked her hair. I quickly did the math: If my youngest, now seven months old, is similarly willing to snuggle until he’s 12, then I’ll be 50. So, right now, until I see some 14-year-olds asking for “two minutes” at bedtime, that’s my number.

“Two minutes” is my longtime bedtime ritual with my six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. As they go to bed, I lie down with each of them in succession for two minutes, followed by a carefully choreographed series of pick-ups, tosses kisses, and hugs. What’s in it for me? Just moments like this: As I lay next to my son the other night, I gave him some gentle pats on the leg as he grew sleepy. And as I did, he turned to me and said, "I love you too, Daddy."

Only twelve more years of this to go? The number looms large.

Oh, Yeah? Well, My Dad Isn't Nearly as Strong as Your Dad!

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I was chaperoning my five-year-old son--let’s call him Fellow--on a kindergarten field trip when I heard him say it for the first time: “My Dad is stronger than your Dad!” Fellow was debating fatherly strength with his good friend, Josh, and the claims quickly entered the level of the ridiculous: “My Dad could move that whole building!” “Well, my Dad could push down on the ground and move the whole Earth!” And then, inevitably, Fellow turned to me to ask, “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

Now, I’ve read the parenting books and I know that the correct response was to quietly discourage or redirect the debate without overreacting—maybe something along the lines of, “Joshua’s daddy and I are both strong, but not strong enough to move that whole building!”

But frankly, folks, I’ve seen Joshua’s Dad, and he’s a massive hulk of a man who could very likely move a whole building if he pushed hard enough. He could certainly put me through a building if properly motivated. And I said as much to Fellow: “Are you kidding?! Joshua’s dad is definitely stronger than me. I’m not so strong.” As I said this, Fellow’s smile stayed fixed to his face, but his eyes looked lost. “What do you mean, Daddy? You’re strong!”

When we walk to school together, when we watch movies, when we play baseball, Fellow and I consider ourselves friends. We banter, we debate, we tease. “Friend” was, in fact, my first nickname for him as a newborn. (OK, after “shnook.”) And so sometimes I forget: Unlike the rest of my friends, he doesn’t know my flaws. He doesn’t even know I have flaws. And he doesn’t want to know. Even when the evidence is staring him in the face, like when I stand eye-level with Joshua’s dad’s biceps, sometimes I just have to keep it to myself. It’s a small price to pay, letting him think I can move mountains.

I Want a Babysitter

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0700

I belong to that group of people known as husbands. I am a husband. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a father. And as a father, I frequently employ and observe babysitters. As I gave a set of instructions to one sitter recently, it suddenly occurred to me that there are times I, too, would like to have a babysitter.

Why do I want a baby-sitter?

On nights when my wife works late, I would like not to have to prepare my own meals. I would like not to have to even decide what to eat. I want to be called to the table and be surprised (Hope it’s mac-and-cheese!). I want someone to do my dishes, even with the limited attention to detail a college freshman brings to the task. When I’m bored, I want someone to engage me in a game of Othello. I wouldn’t mind if they let me win. I want someone to play me my favorite CD over and over again, even though it’s “Bat Out of Hell.” If the CD skips because I’ve scratched it through overuse, I want someone to sing to me. We could even do a duet of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”

I want someone to monitor me and help me maintain my focus as I finish any necessary tasks, someone strong enough to keep me from checking ESPN.com until I’ve paid the phone bill. On nights when my wife is traveling on business, I want someone to remind me that if I stay up until 2 a.m. watching “Rocky III,” I’ll have trouble waking up for work the next morning and that if I go to work tired, and fall asleep at my desk, I could get sent home.

I want someone to tell me that my drawings are beautiful. I want someone to schedule play dates for me with other dads when my wife is away, because I’ve never really been sure how to go about that myself. When I’m tired, I would like to have someone read to me. And I want—no, I demand—a treat for finishing my cauliflower. And I want sprinkles on it.

My God, who wouldn't want a babysitter?