Category Archives: children

children, Parenting, Thanksgiving, The Fresh Prince, Will Smith

Parents Just Don’t Understand (Revised)

The Fresh Prince was so right.
Parents just don’t understand. New ones, old ones, middles ones and soon-to-be ones. We all don’t get it.
Will Smith once famously rapped about how parents didn’t get their kids. Ironically, now Smith is a parent. Well, I listened to him and hundreds of other spunky artists when I was a kid. And now I’m a parent, too.
Not sure what it would sound like, but the title could stay the same.
The other night, we watched the lovely interaction of my brother-in-law and his wife as they are merely days away from their first child being born. And the hilarious back-and-forth between husband and wife pre-baby is enough to make anyone buckle over with laugh pain, but I couldn’t help but think of how things are about to change for them.
My wife and I tried to dispense some of our ancient wisdom of parenting onto them. Feeling like we helped – cause, hey, we got this thing down, baby – shortly after everyone left, we put our four little, well-raised angels to bed.
And then reality slapped us with something called a check.
Sitting down for the first time all night, within two minutes our five –year old came in to announce the 2-year-old had pooped, only to find he had not, but now the lights were on, the screaming had started and the routine broken. 

The red-head ended up in our bed.
Following hours of tossing, turning and crying – and that was just my wife and I – the alarm clock went off and we began our day. Just a few hours later, as my wife went to the Y for a workout (for fitness and sanity), she turned to find little red was asleep, because of course he was.
Sigh.
She turned the van around and went home, because that’s just what you do.
These are the real things that happen as parents of children. Your phone is taken over with random snapshots of the ground or someone’s pant leg, your Netflix account only recommends animated PG movies and your car will become a van. A van, that is, with health hazard codes, unidentified stickiness and something that smells, but can never be located.
The carpet will stain, beds won’t always get made and laundry will become endless, a vast sea of socks, underwear and things you swear they could not have worn for more than 18.5 seconds before changing. Again.
You will come to find yourself shoving every ounce of adulthood into the hour or two between your kids bedtime and yours. R-rated movies, recorded TV, political, religious and intellectual conversations, calendar planning, reading and more are gorged on until you pass out from over-stimulation and exhaustion.
Going to and coming home from vacations is, quite simply, a form of torture that should only be used by dictators from the Middle Ages. It resembles Home Alone, honestly – counting heads, scrambling to pack at the last minute, someone spilling milk all over the food – except you didn’t actually get to sleep in and John Hughes didn’t pen this script.
Going shopping – to either the grocery store or to the mall is an elevated form of that torture. You’ll just want to give up. At any given time, eight hands are shoving things into our cart that don’t remotely belong there. And your five-year-old is bound to say something fantastic, like, “A BRA! Gross!”  
Sounds just awesome, right? Well, it is.
We don’t know anything about being parents, but we do know just a little bit more about being parents to our kids than before we started. The only real advice you can get is that it’s your life, your kid and you’ll figure it out all on your own, in your own way. What works for us might not for you – and it certainly isn’t the way your parents did it between 25-35 years ago.
From time to time, you’ll just wish it was a bit more quiet and calm, with fewer injuries to your children and to you. No, seriously:  Dads, wear a cup.
Occasionally you will hope you don’t have to read site words, review homework, wash dishes, give baths and laundry. You’ll just long for a little more time with your spouse. Or maybe even by yourself.
Then one day, in the very near future, you’ll get it. As my wife says all the time, they will have their own lives and we’ll have a clean, empty house with nothing but time.
She’s right.
I’m certain at that point we’ll feel out of our element, without the structure of any structure, thrust into a new situation and expected to survive, adjust and carry on.
You know, kind of like we were when we started having kids and lost all of that so-called freedom and beloved individuality.
So today I’m thankful that we laugh a lot, that we stare at them sleeping (in a totally non-creepy way), that we hug them, that we discipline them. I’m thankful for the loud, constant, smiling, annoying, chaotic change. I’m thankful for it, I love it and I’m glad it’s been given to us.
Forget pragmatic, sensible and a life based on logic or fact. There’s really no room for it here, in the ballyhooed “real world.”
And thank goodness for that.
Parents just don’t understand.
Standard
children, Life, Philosophy

Life’s Tough, Forget the Helmet

It is difficult to identify when it all began. Was it a slow progression, or just a band-aid like effect? Were we intentional about it, or was it just a subconscious social switch?
Whatever the case may be, we have become weak as individuals, which make us weak as a society.
I think I’ve noticed signs for some time, but the biggest was when several, if not all, of our surrounding communities postponed Halloween trick-or-treating this year due to an expected heavy rain storm.
While this is not intended to be a political statement or commentary on the towns and cities that made the decision, it is what it is. I’m certain the town and city councils or members of governing bodies who make such decisions did their due diligence and determined it was best for the children to stay out of the elements.
So this conjecture I have about weakness is not based just off one incident, yet instead serves as a microcosm of a bigger argument.
My wife and I looked at each other just downright confused. We waxed nostalgic about how “back in my day” we’d have put on a coat and got ourselves some candy. I’ve worn a mask in 80-degree heat and gone trick-or-treating with a winter coat due to flurries.
There are other indications, too. The helmets, knee pads, thigh pads, elbow guards and mouthpieces children are now recommended to wear riding a bicycle is a good one. Yeah, uh, I learned to ride my bike in the country. We had a gravel road and no concrete. Needless to say, I bled.
And my father, as kind as he is and was, looked at me and simply said, “How bad do you want to learn to ride that bike?” His point: it’s going to take some effort and some education.
My first basketball court was on dirt. The ball went through the basket and hit the ground – and pretty much stayed there. You had to pound the rock to dribble more than twice. And with enough use, the dirt court became a clay court.
How bad do you want it?
We drink water from bottles, which is still somewhat absurd and probably will be to me forever. We use gallons of sanitizer to protect us from spreading germs, but we seem to be sicker, longer, with a common cold than we used to be.
As a father of four, I certainly wanted people to wash their hands before holding my child as a baby. And I’m not so tough that a good Disney themed band-aid isn’t useful when it’s actually unnecessary. Like, there’s not even a scratch there unnecessary.
But aren’t we taking it all a bit too far? It seems strange considering we’re regressing in so many other areas – like general decency and kindness – but we’ve coddled ourselves and our children to the brink of crippling ourselves, and worst of all – them.
My wife and I play with our kids a lot, but we also tend to kind of let them go. Short of intruding on someone’s personal space or property, I’d prefer to let them learn and imagine. And, if it happens, get a little bump now and then.
Because that’s life.
It’s not all giggles and sunshine and 15 popsicles in an hour. They are going to get hurt in some sort of fashion and I don’t want them reacting thinking that the world has ended if they do.
We’ve made strides that will help them learn from our mistakes. Concussion testing, disease prevention, merging biology and technology, education and new information about the way children learn and what they learn are all moving us forward to a new age and one filled with opportunities.
But on the opposite side, we’re quickly ripping those opportunities away with over-protection. I want them protected and safe at school, at airports, in the home. I don’t want them terrified of engaging in life and trying new things.
It’s a delicate balance that we constantly struggle with. Do we hold them and tell them it will be alright? Or do we look at them and tell them to get up and get moving again? Studies have indicated that we should probably be doing more of the latter.
College-age students are increasingly showing signs of social anxiety – most likely (and this is an assumption) tied to coddling and to the increased use of texting and social media as the main channel for which relationships are formed or maintained.
This protection comes from wanting the best for our children, no doubt. To have it better than we did. But the graph doesn’t just go up for quality of life because time passes and we enter new decades or that the present is what we once thought of the future. We’re operating under the assumption that everything is continuously improving.
That’s just not the case. There may be more and more of everything available to us, but it cannot replace or duplicate simple values, rules and ethics that are basically self-taught.
No matter how much pain or discomfort there is, parents cannot go to a middle school dance and make everyone be nice. They can’t be there on the playground during recess. They cannot be on the field of play. And they can’t be there when a job becomes stressful or you’re working to find balance between family and a job.
It’s called growing up for a reason: it implies that you are moving upward, which is a universal sign of increasing something. In the general context, it’s education. It’s maturity. It’s becoming aware of what is socially acceptable, of the unwritten rules of our culture. It’s find out what the individual values are and how they relate to the community values around them.
And it doesn’t stop. It continues well past the age of 18 or 25. We are always learning and re-evaluating and re-applying until the very end of life. There is no manual, no how-to. Only opinion.
Which is why I’ve formed this one: we are unaware of the fact that we are becoming weaker. We don’t want the right things bad enough to risk failing or damage. We only see the possible pain – not the growth that comes after that moment or what we will learn about ourselves in either succeeding or failing.
Yoda was right. Do or do not. There is no try. The problem is, we are reaching a point where we don’t even try. We just expect someone to give it to us or to help us – we’re teaching ourselves and our children to work the systems to benefit them at every angle.
And yes, in some ways, this ties back to moving a holiday because the weather was a little wet, windy and cool.
Worried about catching a cold? Put on a coat. Frantic about a test? Study for it. Nervous about what someone might say? Ask.
There’s an old saying about prevent defense in football – it prevents you from winning. As a country, our culture has shifted into a prevent defense mode. If all the elements aren’t lined up and perfect, we pull back.
We are preventing ourselves from winning the game of life. We are preventing our children from accomplishing all the things we dream of and for them, setting up so many guardrails and safety nets that there’s little risk.
But the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Better still, the better the character and resolve.
Sometimes, the only road to ride on is gravel and you don’t have a helmet.

How bad do you want it? 
Standard
belief, children, family, travel baseball

The Value of Maybe

This Sunday will officially end another season, another year, really, of travel baseball.

Some cannot – and do not – understand why we do it, my wife and I. Why would we spend so much of our hard earned money on team fees, equipment, uniforms, hotels, gas, lessons? Why would we spend so much of our most precious commodity – that of time – doing this?

After all, our oldest son is 11. One of hundreds of thousands of boys playing baseball, of thousands playing this thing called travel ball. We cannot possibly believe he will make it big, can we? We cannot actually believe he’ll get a college scholarship and advance to the MLB draft, right? We can’t be that naive.

The questions never stop, really. From family, from friends, from co-workers. What we will do with our other three children when they say they want to do it, or something that conflicts? How do you take vacations? Don’t the other kids hate it?

Sometimes, we don’t have the answers, because, well, we don’t.

Honestly, we don’t know what the future holds. What we know – all we know, really – is what we value and what we believe.

We believe in our children. We’re not irrational, mind you. We’re aware of each of their areas of weakness, where they can improve and we work on it, tirelessly.

Some days, we’re more successful than others. Other days, two are pouting, one has melted down completely into a screaming banshee from some distant planet and another looks as though they haven’t ever been shown how to take a bath, clothe themselves or comb their hair.

It’s chaotic, it’s beautiful, it’s our life.

Right now, we have a son who has a gift and a passion for the sport of baseball. We’re following his lead, really. He has stated his goals and works hard at honing his skills. He lives it and breathes it.

And he dominates our schedule. Tournaments in other states, for three or four days at a time. We’ve seen the sun come up on the way to the baseball fields and been there long after it’s gone down. Our summers are blur of dirt, cheering, consoling, feeding snacks, sunscreen, sweat and a van full of passed out, dirty kids on a late Sunday afternoon.

Will we do it for the other kids? Whether it be gymnastics, soccer, basketball, chess, dance, theater or macaroni performance art, yes, we will.

And we’ll buy the Macaroni Performance Art team gear, to boot.

As so many know, it’s just what you do. What else are you going to do? Sit around? Nah, I can do that when I’m 50.

It’s not always easy. Nights of drop off and pickup, coordinating schedules, still in my business casual from work at 10:30pm. Eating dinner or lunch at weird hours. One heading to gymnastics, another to basketball, another a hitting lesson. Feeling guilty again asking for help from our family, another parent on  the team.

Yet even when weary, we find we would not change it. Our children are organized, responsible. They support each other, they get their chores done. They excel in school.

Could this backfire? Maybe. I don’t know.

But what I do know is that we’ll never tell them they cannot do something. Our job is to not only keep them safe and make them good-natured, productive members of society, but to subtly nudge them to attempt to be great.

We don’t want them settling for something, anything, when they are capable of more. Whatever they chose will be fine, as long as it was a choice. It has to be what they want. This is how, we’re convinced, they can do their part to live differently, to change the world in their special way, with whatever gifts have been given to them.

Rarely do I write solely about my family. I’ll have a hard time publishing this post, mainly because I always thought of pieces like this a “Come Blow Your (Own) Horn” moment. But that’s not my intention.

We’re not perfect, far from it, in fact. All any of us can really do in life is follow a combination of heart, instinct, some kind of faith or belief (in something) and a sense of right or wrong. The rest will figure itself out.

Do I know if this world of travel baseball is right? How can I? It feels like it. Do I know if we’re raising our children to actually do what we want, which is to follow their passions? It feels like it. And that’s life, really, just a bunch of moments built on feeling something.

Emotion is what gives life, well, life.

So I’ll take every dirt angel in the summer, every night spent washing a uniform, every time we’re squeezing in a movie or a family dinner that actually takes place at our kitchen table. I’ll take every road trip, every moment with the iPod plugged in and the whole family – including the 21 month old – singing “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.”

Our mini-van turns into a recording studio, a little traveling band: Mom, Dad, three boys and a girl. The lyrics to our song of life are noisy gyms, cracking baseball bats, football pads colliding, paintbrushes dipping into cups, toys strewn from one floor to the next, barking dogs, dirty dishes, sidewalk chalk, tears, laughter, and more laughter.

This is our life. And I wouldn’t want to miss it.

Right now, it’s travel baseball. In five years, it could be something else. Whatever it is, it will keep our family tight-knit, supportive and growing as individuals, and as a family.

My wife and I found our purpose, and it wasn’t for a job, a career or paying bills. It was to pour every ounce of what we have into the children that a higher power entrusted in our care.

We can’t know if we’re doing it the right way or the wrong way. We can only go on feeling it out as we go.

Maybe they’ll change the world, in their own way.

And maybe is worth everything.

Standard