Category / Building Skills

This category houses posts having to do with things we need to learn and do well as fathers.

by Michael

“Everything You Need”

My friend, Patrick Shaffer wrote this letter to a young man when his mother and member of Patrick’s church asked him to participate in her son’s school assignment.  Patrick’s response is an essay of proverbs, written from a place of compassion and wisdom.  His letter reaches to distill everything you’d want a young man to know.

I’ve been turning over Too Short’s instructions to young boys in the last week; if you are unaware of it, don’t worry over it because it isn’t worth worry.  I started writing a post in response.  I haven’t finished.  Then, yesterday, I saw my comrade’s Advice at the Huffington Post.  Pastor Patrick’s words are a kind corrective to that musical nonsense that had so many people alarmed.

Of course, I don’t agree with everything Patrick says here; I never agree with everything Patrick says, so I shouldn’t start now, right?  Nonetheless, he’s got some powerful stuff in this lovely letter to a single mother’s son.

Hey, I hope you are well. I wanted to share some things with you about life and all of the above. Forgive me if they seem scattered but I think what I have might help.

You should be awakening to new ideas of freedom, an expanded world and optimism about your future. The substratum or foundation of all of those things, though, is responsibility. Great responsibility is placed on your shoulders. Responsibility perhaps that you would rather not have and don’t think it strange if you vacillate between your childish tendencies and being a young adult. It happens. I still wrestle with the kid in me, and it never leaves. You must master that little boy in you who says “this is too hard” or “I don’t feel like this.” Giving in to those voices will lead you to be fruitless in your life. You must hear those voices and push yourself pass them to be who you are — the world is waiting. Being a man is a hard and thankless enterprise, being an African American man is harder.

Your mother loves you and did her absolute best to raise you. As you get older you will see her in a different light and humanize her in ways you couldn’t when you were younger. That should make you appreciate her and love her all the more. You may have had to piece together the meaning of what a man is from your father and different male figures in your life. Some of us have failed you, some of us will fail you but use our lives always as a class. Learn from our failures; hear our wisdom and they will serve as the tapestry of the man you will become. But really it’s not up to us anymore; it’s all up to you. We are here for you but the training wheels of life are coming off now — time for you to peddle and ride the bike yourself. We will be watching and be right there when you fall.

You will have unbelievable standards to live up to from the world at large and even from your own people. Our president is a black man — who can live up to that? Your world and your very meaning in the world is ever changing at a seismic rate. Sometimes it will be hard to keep up.

You will look over your shoulder and know that there are peers who aren’t smarter, haven’t worked as hard as you, who will get all the breaks in life and you will wonder “why is this so hard for me?” But that question means that you are conscious of your growth, your progress and what you have achieved. Remember son, you are not in competition with anyone but that kid on the inside of you. If you can grow him up, without being weighed down by what someone else has achieved, you will be just fine. If you can understand that that little kid on the inside of you is there for counter balance, when things in life are stressful and sometimes way too serious for you. When you master the moments of knowing when it’s time to play and when it’s time to work, you will be just fine.

The world has expectations of you. Your mother has expectations of you. I have expectations of you but really, we don’t matter — it only matters what you expect from yourself. I hope you expect great things; you will achieve what you want when you master working smart and not hard.

I admonish you to stay in school, finish everything you start. You will be pressured to make money, for this reason and that reason. The reasons may be legitimate but stay in school anyway. Even if you’re broke, have to sleep on the floor in a friend’s apartment, finish the degree. Education is the key — go to school and work part time if you have to. I wish I could tell you that getting an undergraduate degree is enough, but it’s not. Don’t take a break, stay in and go to graduate school. The economy will turn, more jobs will be available one day, and your education will prepare you for your future career, your future life. You don’t want to work a job, you want to have a fulfilling career and there are no shortcuts to the life you want. If you want it go after it, stay after it. Don’t quit, you will be sorry you did.

To finish reading pastor Patrick’s letter, click here.

by Michael

LZ Granderson Says Raising Boys Isn’t Easier

This article is from cnn.com and it’s by LZ Granderson.

My son had barely taken his first breath when the people in the hospital started telling me how lucky I was.

Not because he was healthy, mind you, but because he was a he.

“It’s easier to raise boys,” I was told.

And for a while I actually believed them.

Then I started paying attention.

Did you know boys are more likely to drop out of high school than girls? Or that there are more female college students than male? And did you know the imprisonment rate for men is roughly 15 times higher than the rate for women?

If this is what boys being easier to raise than girls looks like, coul`d you imagine how many men would be in jail if raising girls got any harder? We worry so much about girls getting hurt — and justifiably so — but interestingly enough, the stats show it’s our boys who are more likely to get robbed, attacked or even murdered. We see girls as fragile orchids and boys as plastic plants. But let’s face it: At the core of this line of thinking isn’t safety — it’s sex.

When someone offers this piece of advice, it’s with the thinking that girls have to be protected from boys who will say and do just about anything to get in their pants. What’s typically missing from this discussion is the challenge to parents — particularly fathers — not to raise a liar and a cheat.

True, parents of boys do not  have to worry about them coming home pregnant, but does that mean an unplanned pregnancy can be considered “the girl’s problem”? After all, a boy’s girlfriend did not get pregnant asexually. That’s why I’m Tebowing day and night, hoping my 15-year-old has the will to stay away from sex — even though the world all around him tells him there’s something wrong with him if he does.

Easier? Ha. Try different.

Click here to read the rest.

by Michael

Parenting: A Set Of Questions

The boy’s verbal skills are complex.  He’s a great communicator.  I mentioned before that one man told me when my son was four months old that good baby communicators cried because crying was their way of communicating.  So my boy is a good communicator.  Nowadays, he uses words that are too advanced for me to follow.  I think God only understands most of it.

Apparently my mother, grandma, has been interpreting him since before he was even baby verbal.  And his grannie, my mother-in-law, has a language she uses with him that I’m not even sure he understands.  But those require another series of posts.

That said, I’m making a short list of questions that have no meaning.  They consist of the questions we’ve asked the boy up to this point.  Of course, your questions may be different.  Because your parenting skills may be stronger than mine, than ours.  I’d love to have your current questions, if you have any.

My questions.

  1. Are you brushing your teeth?  Of course he’s not.  He’s putting the brush in his mouth, licking the tasty gel, and circling or dancing around me as I brush my teeth.  He hears my reminders.  “Brush,” I groan, lamenting that it’s so early to attempt communication with another human being.  “Brush,” I say while foam flicks from me to him.  And he nods, turning his hand but really doing nothing different inside his mouth.
  2. Did you hear me?  This is my preferred method of not repeating myself.  I had a rule when the boy came along.  I’ve eased up on it a bit, but I told my wife that I didn’t believe parents should repeat themselves.  My mother didn’t, least I don’t remember her doing it much.  When she said something, she said it once.  Or we met trouble.  So I’m raising the boy that way.  To prevent repetition, I ask this question.  Of course, I still have to repeat it so I’m living a life of compromise.
  3. What did you say?  This is a common question now.  Because I can only interpret about 40% of the boy’s “words” these days.  His vocabulary is growing.  He knows much more than he’s able to repeat.  But not a day goes by when I won’t confess, “What?”  He’ll repeat himself earnestly, nodding his head while saying something again.  I’ll ask, “What did you say?” and he’ll repeat and stamp a foot for emphasis.  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
  4. Where is my phone?  A variant of this question is something like, where are your gloves or where are my shoes?  There is little point to this question since I can’t understand Bryce’s answers.  So why do I ask it?  Who knows?  But I’m coming to assign most of the responsibility for lost things to my kid.  I figure he’s a safer reason than admitting my personal flights of memory.  Plus, I need to get something out this parenting arrangement even if it’s just saying to my wife, “How would I know where your cell phone is?  Ask Bryce.”
  5. Are you dry?  Bryce is being potty-trained.  Or he was potty-trained over the Christmas weekend (Please don’t ask).  Part of the three-day experiment was to praise him repeatedly when we checked for dryness.  So, we’d ask this question and he’d answer in the thrilling, high-pitched, “Dry!”  He still doesn’t exactly recognize dryness.  He’ll claim “Dry,” in that song of triumph when he’s sprayed the entire bed and busted a diaper overnight.  I think the only point right now of asking the question is to see him get excited about being dry, even if he isn’t dry.
  6. How was your day?  A variation of this question is, what did you do today?  It’s my attempt to have a chat with the child, to treat him, you know, like a person who does things during the day.  He knows “Daddy at work” so I figure I’ll check in with him for what he did.  Of course, he has nothing to say.  Because he, uh, doesn’t work.  Well, he plays.  That’s something.
  7. Why are you calling my name?  The second part of this question, “Why are you still calling my name?” carries the same effect.  A variant of this question is, simply, why?  There is no answer to this question.  Even if he says something.  He simply keeps saying “Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.”  I used to love this.  I swelled at it.  And he didn’t stop.  I just distract him when I’ve grown exhausted.  And I wonder if, one day, I’ll ache for that simple call.
  8. Were you good today?  I instruct my son to be good.  I say this to him daily, particularly when I’m departing.  I tell him this before he slams the door to our home; he slams the door because he’s not good at closing it any other way.  Of course, because I like a few of my neighbors, I press my palm up each time to soften his force.  I walk away wondering how long I’ll do things like that before he gets that I’ve been blunting him in one way or another.  But that’s a digression.  I tell him to be good.  He looks at me.  I ask an earlier meaningless question like, did you hear me?  He says, “Hear me” instead of yes.
  9. Tell Mommy or Daddy when you have to potty, okay?  When we were doing the three-day intensive, Bryce  got this question from the chief trainer—over and over.  He would say, “Okaaaay.”  And he’d commence to, well, not doing it.  That gets tiring after a day.  But he got so tired of this question because he’d say yes for a dozen times. Dawn would ask every minute or two and, after while, he just looked at her.  He would sigh.  He would stamp.  It’s a joke now between us.
  10. Are you ready for bed?  This usually an invitation to a no.  But sometimes he just walks right to his bed and expects one of us to follow.
by Michael

Radiance Shining Back

I was tempted to title my re-post of this great article “Standing Naked in the Mirror.”  But I didn’t want the spam.  In writing his post Janell Burley Hofmann does a great service to parents, playmates, friends of children, uncles and aunts, and extended family members.  I saw it on Margo’s FB wall and over at the Huffington Post, but it appeared originally at rachelsimmons.com, where I’m linking below:

I am sitting, cross legged, on the bathroom floor trimming my five year old daughters’ toenails.  My nine year old son showers his muddy body as I lean against the tub.  My three year old daughter wrestles herself into pajamas in her bedroom.  My eleven year old son bursts in from football practice and hollers upstairs about reheating leftovers and having a sore throat.  My husband is out dropping our minivan off for a tune up.  The sun has set and we’re putting another day to rest.  In the confusion of this typical weeknight, I glance up from the floor at my seven year old daughter, standing on the step stool, completely undressed, brushing her teeth.  I don’t like the way she is looking at herself in the mirror.  I don’t like the way she pokes at her belly and frowns at her profile.  I watch her for another minute and step in.

“What’s up, girl?”  I ask.  “I’m fat.”  she responds without hesitation.  I’m instantly weak.  She continues, “My stomach jiggles when I run.  I want to be skinny.  I want my stomach to go flat down.”  I am silent.  I have read the books, the blogs, the research.  I have aced gender studies, mass media, society and culture courses in college.  I have given advice to other mothers.  I run workshops and programming for middle school girls.  I have traveled across the world to empower women and children in poverty.  I am over qualified to handle this comment.  But in reality, my heart just breaks instead.  I am mush.  Not my girl.

I rally some composure and stay cool.  “You are built just perfect – strong and healthy.”  And she is.  But this doesn’t soothe.

Click here to finish reading.

by Michael

Child-proofing Relationships

Several of my friends are looking forward to bringing babies into the world.  More babies.  These folks have at least one child and they’re looking forward to the one coming.  I don’t think there are twins coming… But getting news of someone’s pregnancy always leaves me with a scratching question: How will that kid change things for you?  In the case of marriage, how will that kid change things for your marriage?

Children definitely impact your other relationships too.  I can list a dozen people I haven’t seen or spoken to outside the occasional text and email.  Those people either avoid me because they think I’m busy (and I AM), or we can’t find the time to do more than periodic phone-tagging.  It took me two days to call Winfield back the other week.  And I was trying to find the right slice of time for us to talk unrushed, and when the third part of our conversation came around (the call got dropped twice), we still didn’t finish.  We haven’t been able to finish.  And we were talking about being fathers!

I read this article the other day.  It talks about how important it is to know what to expect when children are on the way.  Kelly Alfieri offers some helpful prompts that make good sense.  Then, I saw this article in Psychology Today, and I think Vivian Diller heard me in my study screaming my agreements.  The Psychology Today post was about marriage in midlife.  She offered marriage myths in it.  When she got to the myth about kids solidifying marriage, she said, “Even if creating families may have been the motive behind why some couples marry, the truth is that placing your focus on children over your marital relationship invites major problems over the long term.”

A lot people talk about divorce-proofing marriages.  There are books written about it.  Some of them are good.  Along with all those words and along with the words in the posts I’ve linked above, I think marriages need to be child-proofed.  My friends have lived through baby-bringing days, and more of them are bringing infants into the picture.  They’ll push little plastic plugs into wall outlets.  They’ll open gates across doorways.  They will stick foam things over the corners of tables and attach weird locks on their cabinets that will take a seminar to figure out how to work.  They’ll hide poison from themselves and see how all the little things in their lives have become safety hazards.  And I hope they won’t miss their marriages.

So, here’s my attempt to start a “Child-proofing your relationship list”.  It’s unfinished so that you can comment, add to it, and, together, we’ll finish it.

1)  Build a life and bring your kid into that life.  This comes from one of my mentors.  He says, that children are meant to be integrated into the life you already have.  They aren’t meant to have lives built around them.  Of course this is difficult in practice because children (and I have a toddler) expect to eat when they’re hungry, be cleaned when they’re dirty—although Bryce can be dirty for a long time before it occurs to him that he should complain—and generally believe the world revolves around them.

2)  Establish a routine for your important relationships.  This may look like a weekly conversation with a spouse about your marriage.  It could be an appointment with your buddies after work twice a week, a date night, a girls’ night, a visit to the gym with a workout partner, whatever.  It will be a routine, something you do regularly.  Establish it.

3)  Keep that routine religiously before a baby comes.  The routine will be stretched.  The relationships will change and necessarily so.  You’ll never run completely away from the relationship you’re developing with that non-rent-paying-person called baby.  But you can consciously run in the opposite direction.  You can seek to strengthen your friendships in the face of parenting as opposed to letting them lapse because you have a kid.  This will keep you from using your kid and from ending important relationships.

4)  Learn to listen to the needs of your significant other.  Again, this can apply to marriage or some other relationship.  Sometimes the error in a relationship, especially when children show up, isn’t talking but listening.  The careful and hard work of paying attention is more important than speaking actually.  Listening is inherently generous.  Listening is humbling because you keep all that important stuff in your mouth.  It’s an unselfish behavior, which is why it’s so hard and why it means so much when you’ve actually been “heard” by someone.

5)  Look for a trusted baby-sitter and map out intentional times to be away.  Preferably you’ll begin the search when you find out that an infant is coming.  It will take time.  But here’s the thing: you need to leave that kid.  I know, I know.  I don’t mean all the time or everyday or, even, on some regular schedule.  But you already know that you don’t like to be around anybody all the time.  Is that just me?  No, you need a break from that child.  Choose who you’ll be with when you leave, whether it’ll be your own time alone.  But leave.  Go away.  It’ll replenish you for the next contact.

Okay.  Your turn.  What’s next on this list?

by Michael

Rushing Through Parenting And Everything Else

We were eating breakfast yesterday when I noticed something Dawn told me a couple weeks ago.  I said to her back then that I was trying to get the boy’s breakfast done.  She asked if I was going somewhere.  I wasn’t.

That small exchange reminded me of something that came back yesterday morning.  The boy teaches me, in small and big ways, to slow down, to resist rushing.

We were eating again.  There’s something about eating that speeds me up or, in this case, slows me down.  The morning routine is routine.  We get up.  I complain and grumble and mutter for an hour or so until I can find my words.  At the same time, the boy runs around.  He sings.  He runs one of his trucks down the small hallway.  He pushes that mower thing and I say stop.  Then we get dressed.  Sometimes that means the boy showers with me.  Most times he’s already been bathed the night before and simply needs to change clothes.  He’ll run to me when my shower stops.  We’ll finish our father and son routine.  After we’re dressed, he’ll ask for breakfast.  I’ll get things together, explaining how much quicker things would go if he were able to help.  He looks at me in that confusing-but-knowing way.

Breakfast is on the table.  I start with helping him pick up his spoon.  We transition to him eating himself.  I’m eating my food; he’s eating his.  His spoons are filled with smaller heaps of oatmeal.  I’m almost done with mine.  At one point I thought about my wife’s comment.  Where are you going?  What do you have to do?

I read Parker Palmer last summer.  I think it was The Active Life.  It may have been Hidden Wholeness.  I read both of them in preparation for a class, and I bleed the memory together of both books.  But there was a part where he was describing contemplation.  If memory’s right, contemplation has to do with being present.  With living in the present.  Often you get at contemplation by solitude or by practicing something like silence—which no parent can conceivably do.  He said that contemplation could be anything, that it could be any activity, not just sitting.  It wasn’t a particular type of activity or inactivity.  Living contemplatively looked differently and it looked like a lot of things potentially.

I’ve thought about being a contemplative parent.  I’ve thought about living with an awareness of myself and my son and my family.  I don’t want to rush through life or through the stages of life with the boy.  And then there’s breakfast.

Breakfast pulls me into the routine and the schedule.  It pushes me to the familiar, and the familiar isn’t contemplation.  I can learn contemplation and practice it, but it’s work.  It’s hard to not rush through breakfast.  It’s hard to not rush through everything else.  It’s tempting to move through it all without being aware or being present.  But yesterday when I thought about Dawn’s question, I slowed down.  I gave the boy back his spoon.  I took a deep breath and watched him eat.  I watched him turn his head and talk about nothing I could understand.  I let the boy rule that part of the meal.  And it was slow.  And it was everything I needed, even if I didn’t want it.

by Michael

Question For The Week

Why does Bryce react differently to me than he does to his mother?  This makes his mother go nuts.  It makes his father, well, laugh and, then, think, and shrug.  Or make something up.

Who knows what happens in that little curly head as evening arrives.  Usually we’ll both be home.  Sometimes I get in late or I’m not around before the shouting and screaming are done.  It’s fine because I handle the mornings, starting at the unacceptable hour around 7am, and I’m grumbling through it because it’s unfair that I should have to wake up before 9am.  It’s worse that I have to communicate with a kid who I can’t understand, who pretends he can’t understand, and with other people like grandmothers before 10am.  A conversation with me before 10am is not really a conversation.  But I digress.

Dawn will start the evening ritual.  “Time to take a bath.”  And what does the boy do?  He whimpers and complains in that tone that reminds me of a noisy irritating cat.  I don’t like cats.  Even quiet ones.  Bryce will slump to the bathroom.  Or he’ll slowly start cleaning up his toys.  Or he’ll do nothing at all.  Dawn will call him.

If I’m there, I’m cooking or something like that.  I’m disengaged until my assistance is required by the wife.  But I watch this sometimes.  I can’t help but hear it.

I hear the water running in the tub.  I hear them struggling.  Bryce is whining, Dawn instructing.  The noise level is rising.  I’ll turn on some “better” music.  Jazz or something.  I don’t like the soundtrack of my house during the evening ritual.  Sooner or later Bryce will cry and scream, and this will last through the entire bath.  Sometimes he’ll stand in the tub, refusing to sit.  He’ll bat at the washcloth covered hand his mother waves toward him.  It’s tragic.

I’ve told him several times that his mother doesn’t need the grief.  That I don’t either.  I’ve explained that his mother has cared for him from before he was a person and that the way for him to express gratitude is to hush and splash like he has some sense.  I’ve told him that he’s dirty or nasty or stinky or sticky and that his mother has to clean him even though her cleaning him is a movement of love and not sanity because no one in their right minds would want to clean a noisy, fussy, irritable toddler like him.  He doesn’t hear me through his screams.  He doesn’t hear because I haven’t used the voice.

I use it when I’m passed the point of patience.  And the voice works.  The voice settles it.  It’s my fathering voice.  I have a preaching voice and, I’ve decided as of this writing, a fathering voice.  It’s similar to the preaching voice but it’s especially for the boy.  There’s a tinge of bass and depth and anger, even if I’m not angry.  It’s the tone that tells him that the noise is finished.

Perhaps that is the answer.  But sometimes I don’t use the voice.  I don’t need to.  And this is what causes my wife consternation.  When she’s at school and I have to bath him, he does none of the noise.  When I change him, he doesn’t do the thing he does with mommy.  So who knows what it is.  Do you?  I’ve told Dawn a few times that it wouldn’t hurt to practice using a different voice, doing low and deep rather than her usual operatic vocal match.  It might not work, but it just might shake the boy up enough.

by Michael

How Do You Write A Poem

how do you write a poem

about someone so close

to you that when you say ahhhhh

they say chuuuu

what can they ask you to put

on paper that isn’t already written

on your face

and does the paper make it

any more real

that without them

life would be not

impossible but certainly

more difficult

and why would someone need

a poem to say when i come

home if you’re not there

i search the air

for your scent

would i search any less

if i told the world

i don’t care at all

and love is so complete

that touch or not we blend

to each other the things

that matter aren’t all about

baaaanging (i can be baaaanged all

day long) but finding a spot

where i can be free

of all the physical

and emotional demands and simply sit with a cup

of coffee and say to you

‘i’m tired” don’t you know

those are my love words

and say to you “how was your

day” doesn’t that show

i care or say to you “we lost

a friend” and not want to share

that loss with strangers

don’t you already know

what i feel and if

you don’t maybe

i should check my feelings

By Nikki Giovanni

by Michael

Questions For Potential Daycare Providers

We’re looking to place the boy in daycare because we want him around other children in a regular, structured way.  Plus, we need to get, at least, back up care established for those times with the grands are unavailable.  We think daycare is an opportunity.

Me and Dawn are searching, researching, and touring these weeks.  We’re grateful that his grandmothers continue to care for him and that they aren’t tossing him like spoiled food.  So we aren’t pressed for time.

Here are a few questions I’m thinking through.  I’ve already asked most of them in that first visit.  Dawn, when she calls people, will cover these too in her own way.  Some of the questions are naturally covered by a the provider, in a brochure or a website, but if they aren’t, you should raise them.  I’d love to have your input on these as well.  So leave more questions in the comments please.

  1. How long has this place been operating?  You will probably know this going into a conversation or a tour.  Vehicles like Yelp make knowing this easy.  But it may give the person you talk with a simple way to tell you a story or two that captures what the place is about, how it’s changed over time, and what their mission is.
  2. Who works here?  You cannot overstate the role that caregivers have in a child’s development.  The person with the child really becomes one of his primary teachers, models, and builders.  You want to know the people who spend time with your kid.  You want to know why they do what they do.  You want to know that they’re safe and sane.
  3. Describe a normal day in this center?  This question is helpful if you have a well-established ritual because you’ll know how much distance is between what your kid is doing now and what he may be doing in that center.  An answer should help you see how well your values can fit into their program.  For instance, I need to know how the boy’s sleep routine will be respected!
  4. What do you do with the children?  For me this is an introduction into content.  The answer should give an image into what my boy will walk away with, what he’ll learn, and how active he’ll be in a day or a week.  A variation of this question is, what do you teach the children?
  5. Is the food good?  Kids are picky and this question underlines that.  More importantly though, you need a sense of what types of snacks you may want to introduce your kid to ahead of time.  Most places can’t cook up what you have at home.  When Bryce went to the daycare the other week, he spit the food out at lunch and wouldn’t eat the breakfast either.  I laughed after a while.  It wasn’t because it was nasty but because he was pissed being there.  Still, I wonder if those good people can throw it down the way I do in the kitchen.
  6. How much is my kid worth to you?  In other words, what does it cost to come here?  And if you’re me, the next question is probably why does it cost so much… Of course, you’ll want to get a sense of what care costs where you are, in your community or in places near you.  When there are large discrepancies between places, you should point them out, especially if you can’t see the reasons in the physical environment or in the program structure.
  7. What happens when the kids go nuts?  I am always thinking about this when my son goes to the children’s ministry at church.  He’s had a lot of experience going nuts, and I’ve seen those nice people walking him around, whispering things in his ears that he’s not listening to.  He’s looking out for his mother or his father.  The same question comes up these days with childcare facilities.  I’ve learned already that individual teachers are usually assigned to a kid.  And that the other kids keep doing what they’re doing.  Sometimes the kids will try to comfort the screaming head.  I can see my son’s future.
  8. How can parents be involved?  I like and don’t like this part of what I’m noticing.  Most places require that parents be involved—usually by bringing snacks or serving on a committee or something like that.  I like this in theory.  It means that parents will see and know and be around the “community” that is shaping their children.  And yet I have my reservations.  I’m paying childcare because I’m busy.  Because my wife is busy.  It looks like parenting and child-rearing, even when it’s done with the hands of paid helpers, will continue to command my life.
  9. What else should I ask you?

You can find more questions here.  Happy baby care hunting.  And leave questions in the comments if you think of any.

by Michael

What To Tell Them

I have a mantra that I tell the boy in the morning.  Well, most mornings.  It’s a simple mantra.  My wife knows what it is, and I’ll keep it between us.  I thought about my repetitive phrase today when I looked in my journal after class and saw something.

I wrote a note to myself some time ago.  It says, “Tell your child.”  Then there are four things I put underneath that little heading.  They are

  1. Tell him he’ll be good.
  2. Tell him you love him.
  3. Tell him his mother cares unconditionally.
  4. Tell him he’s safe by God’s grace and your help.

There are probably a lot of other things to add to that list.  Maybe I need to create and repeat multiple mantras in the boy’s ears when I’m combing his hair.  Then I’d have a project though.  I’d need a band and sound effects and everything else just to get the point across.

by Michael

Mondays With My Boy #13

When we first arrived for the afternoon noise fest at the Swansons’ place, Bryce was calm and collected.  Deceptively collected.  I picked him up out of the stroller, and he inched in as if he was expecting me to leave him there.  I thought to myself that the whole daycare thing from the week prior really scarred the kid.  I came in with him after parking the stroller next to cousin Eliot’s and pressing the brakes.  I had a cup in my hand and he glanced from Uncle David to me.  David was reaching out to Bryce telling him to come in.

Bryce went into the front room where he saw Gabby, a black cat who my friends like a lot but who I don’t like at all.  Gabby jumped behind the couch and my son tried to find her.  He went searching and didn’t come up with her, which was good because, again, me and Gabby don’t get along.  We’re pretty sure Gabby once pissed on my wife while she was asleep but that’s another post.

The boy went to the miniature piano and started banging.  Eliot was in the back, on his way up to say hello.  When Bryce walked to the back, me and David followed.  I think that’s how it went.  When I saw Eliot, I waved at him and approached to hug him.  He asked me for more melons please.  I was thrown.  David was laughing.  A week ago he’d come to my house and played with Bryce, and I’d given them melon chunks.  I had done that once before.  Now, Eliot was associating me with honeydew.  I would be the melon man in his mind.  He was slightly disappointed when I didn’t pull little green chunks out of my pockets.

The screaming began after a while.  Bryce and Eliot pushed a wagon of blocks through the house.  They would walk into the kitchen together, sing or talk to themselves in that language that only they could understand.  Eliot, who talks like big people, would say something to Bryce, and Bryce would respond in Eliot’s first language.  Eliot would get it.  This would go on and on until their words or gestures transitioned to yells and yips and yeeeees.

Eliot’s room was a lego wonderland.  David pulled the legos from a well-stocked shelf that he told me he got from someone on craigslist.  We talked about shelving.  He offered me tea and made himself coffee.  The boys did their thing, and we approached the dining room table.  They knocked down a tall building that it probably took Eliot a day to build.  We paid them no mind.  They made noises that a person unfamiliar with the pair would have been jarred by.  We talked about my conversation with Gardner Taylor, about David’s writing, about a story I’m working on, and about other work-related stuff that I won’t mention.  David explained something about brewing coffee in his cool cup, and I sipped tea, being interrupted occasionally by Bryce who would ease in to see if I was still there.

I had to correct the boy a couple times.  He tried to pull the pots and pans and jars off of the open island.  We had to go in the front room to have a chat, and I heard David telling Eliot that Bryce couldn’t talk right now because he was having a talk with Uncle Michael.  A few times David had to have mini-chats with Eliot, explaining that he couldn’t yell in the room with us, but that he could yell in his room, where he could shut the door.  It all sounded so different from our moments together a few years back, when me and David would meet up for lunch or when we all, wives included, would sit in their living area and play games and talk about life and trade recipes and take walks regardless of bedtimes and meltdowns and colds and tears.

We left when Bryce’s window started closing.  That’s my language for him needing a new scene.  He wasn’t bored because he didn’t have things to do.  He was enjoying Eliot.  But he was bored because he wanted to pull pots and I wouldn’t let him.  He was ready to go home and pull out his familiar toys, the ones I wouldn’t object to, even though he didn’t play with our pots either.

Eliot and David walked us out.  It was raining something wonderful by then.  David offered me an umbrella and a hat.  We said something about the shorter days.  It wasn’t even five.  I blanketed the boy, leaving room for his face, and declined the coverings David offered.

I didn’t tell David, but I’ve grown to like walking in the rain without umbrellas since the boy’s come along.  He’s taught me that the rain doesn’t hurt and that, well, it dries.  So I didn’t need a hat.  Of course I knew that the rain didn’t hurt.  But for some reason I used to clench my shoulders in the rain.  Some reflex would press them in and I’d have to remember to walk upright or to stop hunching over and to straighten myself.  I’d rush when running to my car or from my parking space to my building.

When we left the Swanson house, I looked at Bryce and saw him taking in the rain.  He was saying “bye” to Eliot and David and watching the sprinkles and drops.  And I remembered that he liked the rain, even covered from most of it.  I remembered that I like the rain.  And that when we got home after all that playing and after all the walking and getting wet, we’d pull off those watery clothes and get dry.