Flashback: Back to Regular Dad

I posted this almost nine years ago on my old blog. I've been thinking a lot about my little boy, who just hit his tenth birthday. (I need to write more about him. He's amazing.)

Anyway, this seems appropriate and it's not on this blog yet, so here it is.

---

June 30, 2006

I know that ticklish spot, right under Oliver's chin, and I know that when I hit it with my bare toe just right, he goes spasmy with giggles.

I know that sometimes, his favorite thing is rolling across the floor like a log going down a hill. And that, if I gently nudge him with my foot, he'll roll and roll until he hits the window, softly giggling the whole time.

I know that he takes his naps almost like clockwork at 9 am and at 3 pm.

I know that he loves aquariums. And peekaboo. And watching birds. And watching the construction trucks that stream by our apartment. And anyone walking by our window.

I know that he smiles and occasionally waves at strangers. And he flirts with every woman who works at the grocery store, and they all flirt right back.

I know that when I eat snacks, I'd better put down a handful of Cheddar Bunnies or Veggie Booty for him, or else he'll get resentful.

I know that my little boy loves me. I know this. I know if I lay on the floor, sometimes he crawls right up to me and puts his little head against my chest for a few moments. If I'm really lucky, he'll crawl up to my face and give me a wet, sloppy, open-mouthed gooey kiss right on the lips. And that's the best thing ever.

Today is the last day I get to be a stay-at-home dad.

Mrs. B came home tonight and began her summer vacation, which is (unfairly) only six weeks. She gets a month and a half to be the primary caregiver for Oliver, while I try to find myself some gainful employment. And then, when the fall comes, both she and I will go to work, and Oliver will go to the day care seven blocks from our house.

I think back to those early days, when I worried if I was ever going to get the hang of taking care of him all day. (Actually, that first day, I was really worried if he was ever going to take a bottle from me.) Naps worried me. Feedings frightened me. I was constantly worried that I would poke him in the eye, or drop him, or something similarly awful.

And here we are, ten months later. Naps don't scare me any more. The bottles aren't even an issue anymore. We do two meals a day, two naps, hours of playing, and sometimes I'm exhausted and nap while he does and sometimes I don't even bother. I can keep up with him. He doesn't scare me anymore.

It's been nearly a year that I've been taking care of him, and we've grown so much together. I feel privileged to have had this much time with him, that we've been able to afford (barely) to do this. I have a bond with our little boy that not enough fathers get. My own father never had the connection with us from the early days that I get to have with Oliver.

Now I have to readjust to being just a regular working dad, one that drops his kid off at daycare in the morning and sees him at night for dinner and sleep. (Actually, the daycare won't start until late August, but stick with me, folks, I'm on a roll.) I won't get to see him play during the day, giddily tearing through his books or tossing around his blocks, one by one, with a squeal of glee every time one flies into the air. Those moments will just be on the weekends.

I'll miss all the intensive time with him. Hours of playing on the floor, hundreds of books read, balls tossed, blocks stacked and tumbled, messes made and cleaned and made again. I won't miss the problems: the difficult naps, the teething miseries, the days of complete distraction where he couldn't do anything for five minutes without screaming in frustration.

Well - I say I won't miss that. But I will. Because when things went wrong, I was the only one he had during the day to make things better, and almost always, I figured out how to make it better. I got him to sleep. I provided teethers and (before he had actual teeth) my fingers to soothe his aching gums. I found ways to keep him entertained. I figured out how to be his parent, the caretaker, the one he relied on. I learned how to take care of him, and he learned to trust me.

I don't ever want him to forget how much that time meant to me. I know I will never forget it.

"You can ask me anything."

I don't ever want to forget the simple joys of fatherhood. Like talking to my kiddo. I love talking to him. Love hearing how his brain works and how his sense of the world has changed.

This morning, my son rolled into bed with me and started talking. He told me about a dream he had where he was fishing, and then there was something about gummy worms.

And then we talked about summer camp. And about the names for the different groups of kids - all named after different animals. Apparently, all of the animal names changed over the last year, and we mused about why that might have happened.

And we just talked about, I don't know, stuff. We just talked.

It matters to me that he's comfortable talking to me. I want to remind myself that I need to pay attention to him. Too often, I'll be talking to him while browsing on my phone. Everyone does it these days, it's what we do. It's part of our overwired, overstimulated world. But I'm trying to force myself to put the phone down more so I can listen to him.

He's nine now. He won't be nine forever. He's already two months past his ninth birthday. Ten months to go, and then he's ten. Then eleven. Then he's older and older and he's a different person completely.

I want to cherish this time I have with him right now, with this kid as he is right now. I love seeing his brain develop and his words become more refined and enriched.

When he goes to bed at night, he asks me questions. It happens every night. Right as I'm about to turn his light out, he starts with the questions. Simple silly ones. "Which fishie in that picture is your favorite? Do you like meerkats or ferrets more?"

Or he'll walk that fine line between profound and ridiculous. "Dad? What if there were monkeys all over the roof and they were just waiting for us to go to sleep, and then they ran all around our backyard?"

"Dad? What if there was a giant robot from space, and he picked up this whole entire house in his hand and took us away to space?"

Or sometimes he talks about things that happen during his day. Sometimes, he just needs to process the events of the day, and he uses me as a sounding board. I love playing that part. I always want to be his sounding board. I know that's going to change, but I always want him to know he can ask me the questions that he can't get out of his head. I'm always there for him.

"Dad? Can I ask you something?" That's how he starts the conversation.

I always answer the same way. "You can ask me anything, son."

"I know."

Sometimes, my son gets stuck in repeating himself. Usually, it's the same phrase or variations on a phrase. This might be an Asperger's trait, or it could just because he's an eight-year-old kid and that's what they do. I don't know.

Sometimes, he'll spin the same phrase multiple ways. Variations on one phrase. "Happy birthday to you. Happy flurth-day to you. Happy earth day to you. Happy death day. Happy smurth day." Just goofin around.

So anyway, yesterday, he didn't realize he was repeating himself. "Dad? I love you."

"I love you too, son."

Two minutes later. "Dad, I love you."

"Love you too."

A few minutes later. "Dad, I love you."

"Son?" He stopped to look at me.

"I love you too."

He looked back at me. "I know you do."

That was the best answer. It's important that he loves me. But its so so so much more important that he knows that I love him. And that his mother loves him. I can't think of a better way to start the day than with that reassurance. He knows. I've done my job, then.

Proud

I made my son an omelette a few weeks ago, and he decided it was the best food he'd ever eaten. He's eaten omelettes nearly every morning since then.

Most days, he'd ask me for help cutting it up. Motor skills are a challenge with our little guy, so we try to encourage him to work on them as much as possible. But when he's hungry, I'll break down and cut his food for him. Boy's got to eat.

But I've tried to get him to do it. One day I noticed he ate his entire omelette without asking for help. I was so impressed. Then I  noticed that the knife and fork were spotless. He never used them. He just picked the omelette up with his fingers, like a hamburger or something. 

But I still gave him credit. Even if he didn't do what I expected, he found a solution without asking for help. That's what you do as a parent, especially if your kiddo has special needs. A victory is a victory. 

But then this happened. 

All I did was hand him the omelette and the fork and knife. The rest was all him. I didn't even notice at first what he'd done. And then I did. And I got a big grin on my face, and I told him how proud I was of him. He was grinning too. 

This was a good morning. 

Father's Day - Signs of Hope

Father's Day is often a dreadful day in popular media.  I wrote a bitter and frustrated post about it a few years ago, after reading a particularly infuriating post in a national magazine.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this commercial, depicting a dad doing ... well, doing what dads do. He was swaddling his kid. 

His wife called to check on him, and he responded that he had matters well in hand. He was a dad. Dads didn't need help - they managed. So she hung up, and then he pulled up a YouTube video to see how to do a better job of swaddling his kid. 

I probably could have helped him with his swaddle technique, if he'd only asked.

And lo and behold, a dad swaddled his kid on national television. And it was a beautiful moment. It was a real moment. He wasn't perfect, but he was trying his hardest and he wasn't intimidated. He was doing what dads do. (The commercial is called "Swaddle Master. I know a thing or two about swaddling, so I loved it.)

Another commercial, this one for toothbrushes. (Yeah, I know.) But holy cow, this commercial slayed me. Dads holding their kids, and playing with them, and teaching them stuff. It's so simple and just so perfect.



I wish I had a third commercial, so it would be a trend piece. But whatever. Two is good.

Oh, wait, here's a third. It's not a commercial, but it still works. It's a new piece by Louis CK that ran on CBS Sunday Morning for Father's Day.


And this one is great because it adds a lot of elements that are also true to life. Louis is full of doubt and self-loathing and that fiery, angry defiance that defines him. "No, screw you, I'm going to do it THIS WAY!!"

Fathers are doubtful. We are consumed by doubt. We're not sure we're doing it right. The problem with dads having taken such a backseat role in parenting for so long is that now, we're not sure we know how to do it.

Here's the secret. Moms don't know what they're doing either. No, really, they don't. They DON'T. There is no magic innate motherhood gene. We all just learn by trying it and screwing up and waking up the next day anyway.

But we're not hopeless. Lots of dads are doing just what they're supposed to do. They change diapers and hold their kids and kiss their boo-boos and look at report cards and fix lunches. They strap in car seats and make dinners and wipe tears away and make their stuffed animals talk in ridiculous voices.

We do what we're supposed to do. We're not boobs. We're not idiots. We're people, and there are some great ones, and some really lousy ones. But in between, there's a hell of a lot of us who are just doing the job, day after day after day. I saw a great quote today, one that I'd never seen before. "Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow." It's from someone named Reed Markham.

We don't want medals. Just treat us like human beings. When you see a dad taking his kid for a walk, don't think "oh look, daddy's babysitting." That father is being a parent. It's not special anymore to see fathers doing the parenting thing. The world is changing. This year, for once, I'm a little more hopeful that the change is being noticed.

You Are Being Watched

We were in a fast food place the other day. I was pouring a cup of diet Coke from the fountain. I didn't even think about it, because I had done it so many times. Place the cup under the ice dispenser, get ice, put the cup under the Diet Coke spigot, push the button, fill the cup up near the top. Wait for the bubbles to disperse. Fill it up again, and wait again, and then fill it to the top.

That's just how you do it.

And then I realized I was being watched by a pair of seven-year-old eyes.

It's a humbling thing, seeing your child watching you. I wish I had been doing something really cool, like recoding a website or dismantling a carburetor. Or cooking the perfect omelette. But instead, I was just pouring a cup of soda. And my kid was watching me to see how to do it.

It must happen all the time. All the things I do all day that I don't even think about, and he just studies me like a walking textbook. Pouring cereal. Tying my shoes. Making coffee. Shaving my face. So many things.

I remember doing it myself, of course. I have clear vivid memories of watching my dad as he did the simplest things, things he hadn't even realized were things, if you see my point. Things like parallel parking. Like throwing a football in an effortless spiral. Like ordering food in a restaurant. And I watched him, because that's how you learn how the world works. You watch your parents. And the way they do things is the way that it's done.

Is that a little scary, parents and parents-to-be? Good. Because you need to keep it in mind. You are being watched all the time. Whatever you're doing - good, bad, lazy, admirable - your children have their eyes on you. Make yourself someone worth watching.

Photo from flickr user @ANDYwithCAMERA. Used under Creative Commons license.

The Rules Haven't Changed

(Note: I'm going to start working more to keep this blog more active. I have lots of readers out there, apparently. Thousands of you have found this post about double-swaddling, and I'm grateful to each of you for reading it and sharing it. I keep being amazed that people still read this blog, and especially that you still read posts I wrote years ago.

I used to blog a lot more when my kid was smaller. Now that he's older, I have to remind myself I'm still a blogger dad. I'm putting it that way because "daddy blogger" just seems like an insult. 'Oh, you're a daddy blogger, how cute!' No, I'm a dad. Who happens to have a blog. My job is being a dad.) 

When Oliver was little, it seemed like I would blog daily about what was going on with him. When he was a baby, it was easy. First of all, I was home with him for the first year of his life as a stay-at-home dad, so I had lots of time to sit and contemplate his existence. He didn't do much, but it was amazing watching him. He would roll over, he would look at me, he would reach his little doll-like hand out to me, and I would sit and think about how miraculous it all was, and then I'd write a blog post about it.

I'm working now, and he's going to school. So we don't spend nearly as much time around each other.

I'm fortunate, though. My wife and I have a staggered schedule, so she goes to work early and I get the morning shift with him. He wakes up three hours before he goes to school, so we have plenty of time to be with each other. He plays with Legos, he reads, he watches old shows like Godzilla and the Power Rangers and the Fantastic Four cartoons, and we eat breakfast and we talk about stuff. About school. About the kids in his class. About stuff.

And then we drive to school at a breakneck pace, trying desperately to make it before the second bell rang. Usually, we miss it but I just walk him to class anyway.

When he was a baby, I had to feed him bottles of Mrs. B's milk. It was very hard at first, and for the first couple of times, he fought and thrashed and wouldn't let me feed him. It was upsetting for me, and obviously, he wasn't digging it either. So I looked around a couple of other blogger dads, and I figured out that the more anxious I was at feeding time, the more anxious he was going to be. So I started forcing myself to be calm during feeding time. "You're all right, little man. It's just me, and it's just your lunch. No big deal." The more I relaxed, the better it went. Success breeds success, so the better the feedings went, the better I felt about them.

The same is still true. Especially now that we know he has Asperger's, I have to pay more attention to how he's feeling at different parts of the day and how I might be contributing to that, consciously or not. Our mornings have been problematic for a while, and I realized what the problem was. We have three hours - THREE HOURS - to get ready for the school day. And yet, I'd been waiting until the last five minutes of the day to ask him to do some basic things - going to the bathroom, putting on his socks and shoes. And my son is not a person who likes to be rushed. So he'd dawdle, and he'd get distracted, and inevitably it would take him twenty minutes for him to do something that I could do in 30 seconds. And we'd be late.

What's wrong with that equation? What's wrong is that I'm thinking about how I would do it. I would move faster. I would look at the clock. I would realize how late it was. Well, my son is not me. He does things at his own pace. And I just need to accept that. Instead of trying to force him to be me, I need to accept who he is.

And for me, that meant changing our schedule. Now, I give him a full twenty minutes to do those final last-minute steps before we walk out the door. And it works! We make it to school sooner. There's also less yelling, less hectoring, and less resistance from him. I just give him enough time to do his thing. If he gets distracted, I still nudge him back on track. But it's not an emergency anymore. I'm respecting who he is. And I have to remember that my anxiety level feeds directly into his. When the last conversation before school includes a lot of yelling and badgering, it can't be good for his psyche. I like it this way.

So the rules when he was a baby are the same as they are now. When I'm stressed, he's stressed. When I calm down and relax, things go better. He's still the same kid he always was. And I'm still the same dad, who sometimes forgets that.

Which is which?

I've slowed down on this blog, and here's why.

I have two different identities. I have my own name, my own identity, online. I'm on Twitter and on Facebook and on myriad other websites, using my given name. I have hundreds of friends IRL - in real life - and hundreds of online connections.

And then there's this identity. This version of me: this identity that I have constructed over eight years, before I had a son. Before Facebook. Before Twitter. Waaaay before Pinterest. My online identity has existed since 2004. I've written about politics, about music, about my family, about popular culture, and a bunch of other things.

And now, I write on Twitter and Facebook and in other places about pop culture, and music, and my family.

See the problem?

So I've had to reassess, constantly, which version of me will exist on this blog. The more I share under my name, the less material I have left for the blog. It sounds odd, but there it is. And the other thing is that I find it somewhat comforting to be able to write under my actual name. I enjoy seeing that there are people who have known me (and met me, and worked with me) who stay in touch with me online.

Every person is a brand now. Every person markets himself and herself with everything they say, everything they tweet, every comment they leave on a blog. And so now I have two brands. It can be a bit confusing at times.

Some people know me on both sides, under both names. A few people. I say things here that I can't say under my own name. Mostly about my employers. (And interestingly, I find that my Twitter stream is mostly used for profane messages about Seattle traffic.)

So there will be things I talk about on both sides. Here, I'm going to talk about my son. My son has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and I'm going to talk more about in the months and years to come. It's important. And I can be more candid on this blog than I can under my own identity.

It's important for me to talk about it here because some of you have known me for years and years. I know a few of you used to read this blog back when it was a Salon blog. I have longtime readers - I suppose I could say you're friends, at this point.

I'm still going to talk about my son's diagnosis under my real name. But I can be more honest here, more unguarded. I can talk more about my own challenges, my doubts, the struggles.

In both of my identities, I am a political animal. I am a writer. I am a dedicated husband. And I am the father of a boy who has Asperger's Syndrome. Whoever I am, these are the things that will never change.

I'm Still Here!!!

Hey!

I know, I haven't written in two months. And you probably haven't read this blog in two months, either. (Because, y'know, math.)

So I figure I need to do something striking to get your attention back.

So here's something striking. My son, Oliver?

Y'know, this kid?

He's turning six.

Yes, really. Six years old.

He's finishing kindergarten next month.

He's reading now. He reads up a storm. Sometimes, he gets out of bed and starts reading books, and two hours later, he's still sitting on the couch, tearing through book after book after book.

He's grown so much this year. Such a personality he has. He's witty and charming and mischievous (like his dad, I suppose. The mischievous part.)

He's big. My kid is getting big.

Three Questions in My Head

A few days ago, my son and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. He turned to me.

"Daddy, I have three questions in my head right now."

"All right," I said, bracing myself. Questions about monsters? Volcanos? The sun? God?

"How many hours are in a day; how many minutes are in a day; and how many seconds are in a day?"

Math. He had math questions in his head.

This is a boy who is made of me. I loved numbers when I was a kid. Loved clean multiplication, loved the spiraling Fibonacci numbers, loved adding huge numbers in my head, loved doing squares and cubes. 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36. 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216. 13² is 169. No mystery, no guesswork. It is what it is.

I still use math to go to sleep. I count squares, sometimes. Usually, my mind starts getting fuzzy around 17² (289), and I fall asleep before 20² (400).

I pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen and showed him how I calculated the numbers. The answers, before your own child asks you, are 24 hours, 1440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds in a day.

A Rough Night

Yesterday, Oliver had a multiple-meltdown afternoon. We went shopping around 4 and stopped in a Barnes & Noble for coffee and cookies. He got completely wild after that (he wanted to go to the kid's section of the bookstore and we didn't have time to go there) and threw himself on the ground. I picked him up and he hit me. Several times, about the head and the neck. He also tried to pinch me in the neck, which he knows drives me crazy and also hurts!

I sat him down on the sidewalk for a timeout. After a few minutes, I asked him if he was able to control himself. He said, no. So I picked him up and brought him to the car.

He tried to blame it on the sugar.  "The sugar made me act bad."  We told him, angrily, that he's in charge of his own body and nobody makes him behave badly except himself.  He was silent after that.  I could just feel him fuming in the back seat.  

We were planning to go out for dinner, but we told him that we might have to cancel our plans because of his behavior. Meltdown. Timeout. A few minutes later, meltdown again. More hitting. More timeouts.

After some discussion amongst ourselves, we decided to cancel going out to dinner. Which was punishing ourselves, really, but it's awful going out to dinner when he's being wild and uncontrollable. Plus, we wanted him to see hard consequences of his bad behavior. He needs to see that sometimes, just saying he's sorry doesn't fix everything.  So we told him about our decision and of course, he melted down again. Wild sobbing, more hitting, more crying, more throwing of things. 

It lasted all the way until bedtime, when he hit me on the way into the bedroom. He went to bed by himself for the first time in forever. (Which caused him to whine, "I want somebody to snuggle up with me!" It was a pretty drastic punishment, in his mind. One of us always lays down with him at bedtime.) Sigh.

And then at 3 am, Mrs. B started puking. She's got a nasty stomach bug and a fever to boot. She's upchucked a couple more times and she's been in bed all day. (it's 10:30 Seattle time, and she's still in bed.)  So it's just been me and Oliver together all morning while she recovers.   

Good news is that Oliver's behaving much better today. But there's no way in hell I'm dragging my poor pukey wife out to dinner tonight.

Books for Dads

I was asked recently if I knew any good storybooks for kids that involved dads. It's a much harder question than you would think.

Fathers are given the short end of the stick in kid's books. Often, mothers are the only parent in sight, and fathers don't even exist in the book. Moms cook the dinner, moms play with their kids, moms tuck in their child at night. Where's dad? Oh, he must be working.

Sadly, when fathers are a part of the book, they're often portrayed as pathetically as they are in sitcoms: bumbling, disinterested, or just not involved at all. Look at the Olivia books, just for one example. What does dad ever do in those books besides read a newspaper?

Or else, they're about dads working. There are an amazing number of books out there that feature dads, but the story involves dad going away for a business trip and how much the kids will miss daddy when he's gone. So we're present in our absence.

And then there's all the divorced dad books - "Weekend with Daddy"-type stories. And I'm not complaining, because for all the dads out there in that situation, it's great for them to have something that reflects their reality. But there's not enough books that reflect the other reality - real fathers, as a part of the daily routine in the house just like moms are.

But there are a number of books that show dads in a positive light. I especially love finding books where dads are the caretakers - we tuck our kids in at night, we solve problems, we comfort our kids when they're upset. Because that's what we do, in real life, all the time. Here's a partial list of my favorites, along with suggestions I've gotten from friends. I can't vouch for all the books, but I wanted to provide the longest list possible. Let me know about your favorite books about dads in the comments, and I'll keep the list going.

Night Driving, by John Coy and Peter McCarty. This is my #1 favorite book about dads. It's the story of a boy and his dad driving cross-country at night. The pictures are beautiful and the bond between the father and son is really touching.

Other suggestions:

• Owl Moon - Jane Yolen
• The Ice Palace - Deborah Blumenthal
• Baby Brains (and the other related Baby Brains books) - Simon James
• The Gruffalo's Child (okay, it's about a monster and his dad, but that
• counts, right?) - Julia Donaldson
• Daddies are for Catching Fireflies - Harriet Ziefert
• Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti - Anna Grossnickle Hines
• The Angelina Ballerina books
• The Lilly the Mouse books - Kevin Henkes (Henkes always does a great
• job giving dads and moms equal time)
• Enemy Pie - Derek Munson (another great bonding book about dads and sons)
• Born in the Gravy - Denys Cazet
• The Summer My Father was Ten - Pat Brisson
• Kevin and His Dad - Irene Smalls
• Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl (probably for older
• kids)
• If I Were Your Father - Margaret Park Bridges
• The Trumpet and the Swan - E.B. White
• Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg - Dr. Seuss (not about dads exactly, but Horton = nurturing male role model)
• Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too (where the dads walk their kids to school, and they end up saving the day!)

This is meant to be a partial list. Tell me in the comments about the books I missed. What are your favorite books featuring real dads?

More suggestions from readers:

Two Old Potatoes and Me (suggested by the author himself, John Coy!)

"Two Old Potatoes and Me is the story of a girl and her father planting potatoes and I think you'd enjoy both the story and the art."

On Our Way Home - suggested by anonymous commenter

"An outstanding book about a little bear and his Daddy on a hike. No mentions of absence or anything other than special time with Dad. For a bonus, Daddy tucks the little bear in at the end."

Some Dogs Do - suggested by JustineR

"'Some Dogs Do' is about a little dog who has a bad day, and his father is the comforting one. Mother dog doesn't even have a speaking role."

A Christmas Present to Remember

I have to share the amazing feat I just witnessed.

Oliver got a lovely present from his grandmother - a copy of "The Night Before Christmas." It's one of those books that Hallmark sells where you can record your own voice reading the book. It's pretty clever. The pages all have sensors on them, so every time you turn the page, her voice begins reading the words on the page.

And he loves it. He's listened to it probably a dozen times in the last two days, over and over again. And one time, we saw him listening to it, and we noticed something interesting. After grandma was done reading her page, he would repeat everything she just said, word for word.

So tonight, he listened to it one more time as his bedtime story. And then he had me read it. But here's what happened. He started reciting the story along with me, so I started reading lines and then stopping to let him finish the line.

And then he took over. He started reciting the poem from the names of the reindeer - "On Dasher! On Dancer!" - all the way to the end, on his own. I didn't have to prompt him once. We just watched him, jaws hanging open, while he delivered the entire poem all the way to the end. All I could do was turn the pages, one by one, and stare at him. He didn't skip a single word.

That is a complicated poem, full of long sentences and quirky words. And he just rolled right through it, like he was doing Mary Had a Little Lamb.   It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen.

Don't Hit!

Parenting is hard.  

There's so much I want to be excited about.  So much I want to talk about here.  His speech has taken remarkable leaps in the last few months.  His focus is amazing.  We can sit down and read twenty, thirty, forty pages of a book and he just sits, enraptured.  And his dexterity, his confidence in his body, are growing every day.  

But I need to get this out of my system.  

Yesterday, Oliver hit Mrs. B today in the face. Not bad enough to leave a mark or draw blood, but still - he hit her in the face.

He had already done something else that was not allowed, and she was trying to bring him into his bedroom for a time-out.  And that's when he smacked her in the face.  

Earlier in the day, he also threw a shoe at her. 

This isn't the first time he's hit one of us, and it's getting more and more frequent. He's getting more physical with his displeasure about things - kicking at us, throwing things, hitting. I see a glint of pleasure in his eyes sometimes when he's trying to hit me and I'm telling him to stop. 

When he's angry, I've talked to him about throwing stuffed animals or hitting pillows, like you're supposed to, but he always seems to end up throwing something hard and usually in the direction of one of us. 

Time outs don't seem especially effective, mostly because it's so damn hard to get him into his bedroom for a time out and usually he tries to hit or kick again.  We're trying to adjust things a little bit.  Our previous routine was that with time outs, we'd just put him in his room until he calmed down, give him a chance to apologize, and then let him come out.  We've been looking at one of the Love and Logic books and changing our routine a bit. Following the book's suggestion, we're going to start having him sit for a few extra minutes in his room just to make sure he's completely calmed down before he comes out. It also seems like it's in the spirit of what I understand time outs to be: a change in the energy of the situation.  

I hope this is just one of those things he has to go through, because right now, this sucks.  

You Use the Tools That Are Available to You

We did the "three questions" thing again tonight, and he's still asking bizarrely eclectic questions.

Tonight's list:

1) Why are you and mommy married?

2) Why do we have a fan in our room?  

3) Why do we sleep on pillows?

Seriously, this kid makes me think.  I mean, think about it.  Why do humans sleep on pillows? He won't take an answer like "just because."  He wants a real actual reason.  I told him it was easier on your neck to sleep on a pillow, but fuck if I know.  

Later, he was telling me that there were monsters everywhere.  Monsters in the ceiling - "and they have really long arms, and they can touch the door and touch the fan at the same time! And even your guitar, too!"   Monsters were in our bedsheets.  They were living inside the fan.  "And they even set up a house next door to the fan where they live!"  Suddenly, inexplicably, our bedroom was lousy with monsters.

When he presents a problem like this (i.e. sudden monster eruption), I don't bother trying to solve it anymore.  When he was younger, I had a can of air freshener that I relabeled as "Monster Spray" that I'd spritz around the room to scare away the monsters.  Or I'd dutifully look under the bed, in the closet, under his pillow, and shout to scare away all the monsters.   Now, I just make him deal with it.

"So, Oliver," I ask, "what should we do about the monsters?"

"I don't know," he shrugs. 

I tried to guide him to a solution.  "Will your friends -" the various stuffed animals on the bed with him - "help get rid of the monsters?"

"No," Oliver shrugs," they don't have power like me."

"Oh, well then, how are you going to get rid of them?" I ask.  "What kind of power do you have?"

"I can shoot fireballs out of my penis!"  he shouts gleefully.

He gestures toward his crotch region, imagining a giant flamethrower rising out of his pull-up.  And makes fireball-shooting noises.  Pew pew pew!  He does this for a minute or two.  Shortly after that, he drifts off to sleep.  

I wonder if he does this with Mrs. B.  

The Little Man

I'm learning. On-the-job training, I guess.

I was a bad helicopter dad for a long time, hovering over Oliver at playgrounds and in the backyard, ready to leap if he did something dangerous or needed some help. Or even if he just took a misstep. I'm better now. There are a lot of times when I grit my teeth and ignore him while he's in the backyard, climbing up his slide backwards with a garden hose in one hand. Sometimes I don't even bother to come outside.

Here's what I do. I shout into the backyard. "Oliver, I'm trusting you to make good decisions out there and not to do anything reckless. Can I trust you?"

If he says yes, I leave him alone.

At playgrounds, I force myself to stand on the sidelines, not next to him. I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be responsible. I want him to know that he's in charge of his own safety, not me. If he's slipping, he's got to catch himself. It's his job, not mine.

I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be in charge of his own life. I don't want other kids to pick on him, but if they do, I want him to settle the issue himself, not wait for his dad to fix it for him. Whether that means slugging the other kid or yelling for a teacher, he's going to have to learn how to solve his own problems.

I'm trying to do the same thing with discipline issues and those other little domestic issues. For a long time, I tried furiously to figure out how to solve those little earthquake moments of the day. Oh, no, he won't put his shoes on! Oh no, he won't eat his lunch because it's on the wrong plate! Oh, no, he's throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't let him turn on the water fountain!

I used so much mental energy trying to figure out how to cajole/charm/threaten him out of the crisis of the moment, and now I'm just trying to let him resolve it. You won't put your shoes on? Oh, well, we'll just stay here then, instead of going to the zoo. Let me know when you're ready to leave.

You won't eat lunch? Okay, well, it's going to be a long time until dinner. I guess you'd better figure out what you want to do. I'll be over here, eating my lunch.

When he grows up, nobody's going to be scrambling to offer him a different choice for lunch or a different place to set up his office or a different door to walk through. He's going to have to learn sooner or later that he's in charge of his own life, and maybe by giving him a head start, he'll be a little more prepared to deal with other kids and with the outside world. Maybe it'll make a difference. That's all we can do as fathers. We decide the best way to raise our kids, and we do the best we can, and we see what happens.

I can't turn him into a major league shortstop or a Congressman or a successful writer. But I can raise him the best way I know how. I can show him what it means to be a good man by how I live my life. I can work at being a better dad. That's really all I can do. If I do all that, whatever happens, I know that I did the right thing.

But if I don't care - if I don't think about how I'm raising him - if I don't care whether it's a slap or a request that gets him into the car - then I'm a failure as a father.

It doesn't take much to be a good dad. Pay attention. Talk to them when they talk to you. Remember that your kid is always watching you. Read to them.

And care. Above everything else, care about your kids. Just care. They're going to be adults someday, and those little decisions you make now are going to stay with them for the rest of their life. Give a damn about the impression you make in their lives.


Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

The Things He Says: Quick Interludes

Recently, Ollie and I were home together. He was in the other room, yelling for his mother. She had left the house earlier to go to work, and of course, he knew this. (I should note that he was yelling playfully, not in an upset or distraught way.)

"MOMMY!!! MOMMY!!!! MOOOOOOO-MMMMMMYYYYYYYY!"

"Oliver!" I called to him. "Your mother went to work, remember?"

Without missing a beat, he said, "Oh, all right then," and began shouting "DAAAAAAADDDDDYYYY! DAAAAAAAAADDDDYYYYYYY!!!!!!"

~~~

I went to get Oliver out of his car seat a few days ago, and he reached for a folded-up piece of paper.

"Daddy, you can't have this."

"Oh, okay."

"It's mine."

"Okay. What is it?"

"It's special."

"But what is it?"

"It's mine."

~~~

He says synchronized ABCs with Mrs. B at the dinner table. The first time i saw it, I nearly died from cuteness overload.

Oliver: "Mommy, say A."

Mrs. B: "A."

Oliver: B."

Mrs. B: "C."

Oliver: "D."

And etc., through the entire alphabet. And then at the end, they alternate the final words of the song.

"Now - I - Know - My - A - B - C's - Next - Time - Won't - You - Sing - with - Me."

~~~

He has discovered fake crying and is practicing it the way people practice a new language they're trying to master. Sometimes, he burst out in ridiculous sobs for absolutely no reason. Then he orders asks us to cry, too. I'm usually laughing too hard to cry on command.

One time, he sang an entire verse of Jingle Bells, with the only lyric being the word "cry."

Cry cry cry, cry cry cry, cry cry cry cry cry...

I'll try to get this on video.

~~~

He breathes life into his stuffed animals in the oddest ways. They have temper tantrums and get time-outs. They get sick. They eat meals with him.

Yesterday, he told us that his little stuffed Pooh bear didn't like him. "He doesn't like people. He only likes other bears."

"Of course, he likes you. In the books, aren't Christopher Robin and Pooh friends?"

"But he doesn't like me. He's not a Christopher Robin bear."

Big Boy

All non-parents will probably want to skip this post. This is about potty training, a subject that is of endless fascination to the parents of potty-training children and endless boredom to anyone else. It's okay. I get it.

Oliver's still doing the potty training thing. He wears a pullup at home and he does fine going potty by himself, although we often have to remind him. He doesn't have accidents per se - wet pants, puddles on the floor - because again, he's usually in a pullup.

He just got some very exciting big boy unders (his word) with bugs and dinosaurs and et al. on them. He loves them. That's not the big scoop.

The big scoop is that suddenly, he's been dashing off to go to the bathroom without mommy and daddy reminding him! This is a very big deal for us. It's a huge step toward him being completely independent. He's had two or three solid days of wearing underwear all day and not having a single accident.

A couple of days ago, he had just came back from a successful visit to the bathroom and we commended him for going all by himself. He got a huge grin on his face and pronounced, "I think I'm a big boy now!"

Sixty Seconds

Yesterday, Oliver and I went down to the toy store in Old Town Burien.  Great toy store, lots of selection.  We were buying a birthday present for a friend's little boy who was celebrating his first birthday.

As we were coming out of the store, he did what he often does - he went trotting down the sidewalk at a merry pace.  I stopped for a second to put my bags in the car and he just kept running.

"Stop, Oliver," I called.  He just kept running.

A second time:  "Stop, Oliver."  I heard laughter this time.  

It was then that I noticed the parking lot for the store next to the toy store.  All of the cars were parked head-first; all of them would be backing out, and it's almost impossible to see a little boy when you're backing up.

"OLIVER, STOP!"  I shouted as hard as I could. He didn't stop.  I went charging down the sidewalk, snatched him up by the front of his jacket just as he crossed over the threshold of the parking lot.   I probably picked him up too hard.  I pulled him back a few feet so we were standing on the sidewalk, and I began what must have been an old speech for him:  listen to us when we tell you to stop, we're trying to protect you, don't ignore us.  

And then I saw the first car in line in the parking lot begin to slowly back out of its spot.   And my heart stopped.  

If I had been a minute slower, Oliver would have been standing in that very spot as the car backed out.   Just sixty seconds between a stern lecture and a trip to the hospital.  

"Did you see that car come out?" I shouted at him, pointing furiously at the car.  "THAT'S why you need to listen.  That's exactly why I was telling you to stop."  I continued barking at him in the back seat as I buckled him into his seat, and I think he started to realize that daddy wasn't just mad, he was also frightened.

  

If only he weren't so small, and I wasn't so paranoid, and the world wasn't so dangerous.  

P.S.  I shared this with some of my online friends, and Invisible Posse member AK mentioned this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye.  It seems like the perfect sentiment for all the dads out there (and moms, too) who know what it's like to protect someone who seems so perfect, so precious, and yet so hopelessly fragile. 

---

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able 
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

What Color is Heaven?

I need to tell you something, and some of you longtime readers know this already.

My brother died in 1995. He was murdered, by somebody who will be in jail for the rest of his life.

My mother died in 1980, when I was ten years old. She was manic depressive - today we call it bipolar disorder. She took her own life. I don't know if I want to say anything more about it. Someday I might.

I miss them every day. Some days more than others, but I miss them every day. I often talk about them, especially now that Oliver has come into our life.

My father-in-law - Mrs. B's father - passed away two years ago. Cancer. It was shockingly swift, like a car crash. I can tell you that Mrs. B misses him every day.

Oliver has seen pictures of these people - his uncle, his grandmother, his grandfather - and knows that they existed once. He met his grandfather, just once, before he died.

One day, we knew that we would have to explain that they were no longer here, no longer on this plane. So we decided that we would have to explain death. And one morning, the three of us were laying in bed and Oliver asked something about his uncle. And we started talking about death.

We chose to tell him that death is what happens when someone's body gets broken and stops working. We told him that usually, this happens when someone gets really, really old. (This way, he doesn't have to worry that his parents are going to keel over next week. Or that he will. I know that someday, he will learn math, and he will realize that his uncle was just 29 when he died, and that his grandmother was just 35. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

So we talked about death, and then we talked about heaven. I told him that heaven was the place where you go where you die, and everybody goes there. (There is no hell. The God in which I believe does not believe in eternal damnation. YMMV.) Frankly, he was much more interested in heaven. And wouldn't you be? Think about it - it's an invisible place up in the sky where everybody you ever loved goes to live, where you can get everything good that you ever wanted, where nothing bad ever happens. Heaven is way cool.

So the other day, I was putting him to bed, and he started asking about uncle Mike up in heaven. Apparently, he had some details he was trying to get straight.

What color is heaven?

Where is heaven?

Is it there all the time? (Logical question. The moon goes away during the day, the sun goes down at night. Yet heaven is always there.)

What is in heaven? (He wanted details: birds? Trees? Streets? Houses?)

What is Uncle Mike's house in heaven? (Translation: describe it to me.)

What street does Uncle Mike live on in heaven?

What does he do in heaven?

Does he look down on me every day?

At night, too? (It's dark at night, so this is understandably a pretty weird concept.)

Do they eat in heaven?

What food do they have in heaven?

Do they have beds in heaven?

And then he asked if he was going to go to heaven, and I answered him: you are absolutely, definitely going to go to heaven.

He asked why, and I told him that he just was, that this was just the way things worked. I didn't say what I was thinking: if there is no place for you in heaven, son, then it doesn't exist.