Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

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New Parenting Studies Show Toddlers Like Cake and Candy

November 10, 2012 at 2:53 pm , by 

23 months.

Call it a trend. Call it a common trait of the children of Generation Y. Call it what you like:

Studies are consistently showing that when given the chance to eat cake or candy over vegetables, toddlers are choosing the sweets every time.

Nick Shell, a father of a 23-month-old son, expands on the phenomenon:

“With my son Jack’s 2nd birthday coming up next week, we received a large padded envelope from my sister-in-law in Pennsylvania. My son was so excited to open the package after hearing my wife and me tell him it was for his birthday,” Shell explains.

“It’s not that he was disappointed with his new outfit or his die cast metal Thomas the Train toy, but for about ten minutes after opening the package, he continued looking around the room for the cake he assumed came with the package too.”

Raising his son in a lifestyle of strict vegetarianism and avoidance of processed foods, even juice, the toddler boy had never really eaten candy up until last week at Halloween.

“We were so proud of Jack for eating his green beans after dinner last night that we rewarded him with some leftover Halloween M&M’s. After the first few, he kept resonding, ‘I try? I try again.’

Shell goes on to tell that after his son saw a package box of cake mix in the car ride home from the grocery store, his son Jack insisted of holding the box tightly to his chest.

Jack soon began crying when he opened the box to find there was not actually prepared cake inside, but instead only the cake mix.

Little Jack Shell is only one of many toddlers out there who has a slight obsession with sugary foods.

So the next time you hear of a toddler throwing a tantrum because they can’t have a Snickers bar at the grocery store check-out, don’t be surprised.

This sort of thing is happening a lot these days. It’s official:

Toddlers have a sweet tooth.

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Reading Conflicting Religious Post-Election Facebook Comments!

November 7, 2012 at 11:42 pm , by 

23 months.

Yes, I actually voted. Because we all know Tennessee is a major swing state and my one single vote made the defining difference.

The truth is, the main reason I voted is actually because I would have a low self-esteem for the rest of my life if I knew I let an election go by and I didn’t go through the slightly annoying trouble of going out and voting.

It may sound a bit strange that the major motivating force behind me voting was to establish a consistent record for my son to see as he eventually gets old enough to understand the voting process.

But that’s exactly what happened on Election Day.

I want to be able to tell my son that my political beliefs are so strong that I have actually voted in every election since I was 18. So far, so good.

In the quick years it will take him to eventually upgrade from his Thomas the Train trike to his first real car, I will be setting a major example for him everyday along the way.

Basically, I want to brainwash, I mean, teach him the principles of why I support the political stance that I do. And I want to back it up with my actions.

It’s a pet peeve of mine to hear people complain that “they took prayer out of schools” when it’s our jobs as parents to teach our children to pray, in our homes.

Similarly, I get annoyed when people make a big deal about The Ten Commandments not being in courthouses when interestingly, those same people usually can’t even name all ten anyway. Again, if the Ten Commandments were so important to us, we would already memorize and apply them to our lives, teaching them to our children as well.

We wouldn’t need the government’s help in making our faith a powerful thing. Because our faith would be strong enough from the inside to radically change the outside.

I love reading religious post-election Facebook comments. They make me literally LOL, and that’s not a phrase I use lightly.

It’s like half of the post-election Facebook comments say something like, “Thank God! Hallelujah! Obama has been re-elected. Now the women, minorities, gays, and poor will continue to be cared for!”

The other half seems to read something like this: “Start praying for America! Obama being re-elected has officially begun fast-forwarding our nation into the Rapture!”

Here’s the funny and obvious thing I have to point out:

About half of the voters on my news feed who identify as Christians and who post on Facebook about it seem to be Democrats. The other half seems to be Republican.

Our nation will always be about 50% liberal leaning, 50% conservative leaning. Every couple of election terms, the undecided voters and swing states decide to switch back the other way for everyone else.

If suddenly 80% of the population converted to being Democrats, then by default the Democratic party would split into a more conservative and a more liberal sect. Same thing if Republicans became the majority. They’d still split.

Naturally, we find a way to make it to where we have a choice; where we find a side of the fence to relate. There is no easy middle, in order for our political system to work the way it has for so long. We evidently do better with checks and balances.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are evil or stupid, even as some Facebook comments seem to relay.

I just know I can’t live the rest of my life thinking that half of the population is always wrong. Otherwise, my son would also begin to think that about the American population too.

To think that would simply be wrong; not to mention evil and stupid.

 

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Is There An Echo In Here Or Is That Just My Son Mimicking Me?

November 5, 2012 at 9:49 pm , by 

23 months.

From what I remember about the Eighties, and maybe I’m making this up, but I feel like there was this plush parrot toy that immediately repeated whatever you just said. You didn’t even have to squeeze its wing to make it do it.

Well, that’s what my 23-month-old son currently reminds me of.

One night Jack had just gotten out of the bath and was stumbling around the bathroom, in desperate need of sleep.

“He’s like a drunk baby,” I commented to my wife.

“Drunk… baby,” Jack repeated.

What made it especially hilarious is that he said it so monotone and melancholy, like Ben Stein, or at best, a sad cartoon puppy.

Now I know I can’t say “drunk baby” out loud in front of him.

I also realize now that one of my wife’s catchphrases is, “That’s creepy.” Whether referring to a segment on the local news about a haunted ghost tour or just driving down the road and seeing vultures eating the remains of a possum, Jack recognizes the phrase as something he needs to include in his vocabulary.

There’s something funny about a toddler saying, “That’s creepy.”

He doesn’t know the word “scary” yet, but he knows “creepy.”

Last weekend while on vacation in California with my wife’s family, we had to keep reminding everyone that Jack would definitely repeat any new words he heard.

And he did.

Hopefully he’ll forget all about “the s-word” for a while.

While Jack can decently repeat any phrase he hears, that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows the meaning of the words he uses. I assume that eventually comes next.

As for now, he is having fun repeating the words he hears adults use. And to be honest, I’m having fun hearing him repeat all the random stuff I say throughout the course of a day.

For example, at this point could I probably teach him to say, “Beam me up, Daddy?”

Yes, and I shall.

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Experiencing India Syndrome While On Family Vacation

November 4, 2012 at 10:15 pm , by 

23 months.

We left first thing this morning to fly back home to Nashville, after 8 days of visiting my wife’s family in California.

That means that now my family will be undergoing a reverse culture shock.

For the past week, my wife and I haven’t worked and our son hasn’t gone to daycare.

While we made it out of the house most days for some kind of adventure, like seeing the California State Railroad Museum, for the most part, there was definitely a major lack of structure.

And that’s basically the whole point of taking a week-long family vacation: to chill out and enjoy spending time together as a family.

However, when you do that as a family, it sort of messes with your head.

The thing I’m tempted to compare it to is an article I read this week in Details magazine called “Death on the Path to Enlightenment: Inside the Rise of India Syndrome,” by Scott Carney.

It explains how when Westerners, especially Americans, visit the mysterious and ancient country of India, they are prone to… classicly freaking out:

“This quest to become superhuman—along with culture shock, emotional isolation, illicit drugs, and the physical toll of hard-core meditation—can cause Western seekers to lose their bearings. Seemingly sane people get out of bed one day claiming they’ve discovered the lost continent of Lemuria, or that the end of the world is nigh, or that they’ve awakened their third eye.”

In essence, short-term delirium can set in when we find ourselves in unfamiliar environments, especially when the new locale is perceived as exotic or at least completely the opposite of the culture we live in every day.

So let me just say that after a week of not working, staying with family with free room and board and no real schedule, it took me about 4 days to overcome my India syndrome.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that my son absolutely had to battle through his own version of of short-term delirium.

That’s something my son and I definitely have in common: We don’t do well when there is no plan or boundaries.

So it did take the two of us about half the week to get into the new groove.

I made it part of our morning routine to push him around the neighborhood in his stroller while we looked for dogs and owls, while my son clenched tightly his toy rubber eyeball and Jeep.

He also learned better the concept of watching TV, which is something we pretty much deprive him of back home.

Of all things, he particularly liked an old black-and-white western show called Lawman. He even learned to sing the theme song, which basically consists of saying, “Law-man…”

As for my wife, well, we were staying with her family who she only gets to see about once a year, so she was fine in what, to her, was a familiar environment.

We had a wonderful time in California, no doubt about it. But I think my son and I learned a valuable lesson for next summer when we go back:

The two of us will need to mentally prepare for the cultural shock by mapping out a schedule and creating a routine for a vacation where the lack of boundaries and routine is basically the reason you go in the first place.

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Dad’s Candid Confession: I Used To Think Trains Were Sort Of Nerdy

November 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm , by 

23 months.

A train museum is Disneyland for a nearly 2-year-old boy.

I’m all for Disney theme parks and I’m really looking forward to the day my son Jack will be old enough to remember and appreciate a magical experience like that.

But for now, as he nears his 2nd birthday, a trip to the California State Railroad Museum was all he needed.

From seeing giant automatic train villages, to touring 1930′s train cars, to hanging out at the elaborate Thomas the Train play station, this was one museum that my squirmy son could not get enough of.

I’m seriously having trouble understanding what it would be like to have an American toddler son in the year 2012 who is not obsessed with trains.

What theme is your son infatuated with if not for everything locomotive?

If Thomas the Train and his die cast metal friends aren’t the theme of your son’s birthday party, and if he didn’t dress up as a train or a conductor for Halloween, and if he doesn’t have to carry out toy trains everywhere he goes, including to bed, well… what is he into?

This is all I know: Trains.

If this were the year 1995, Jack would have a t-shirt with a train on the front and the writing would read, in big letters:

“Life is trains. The rest is just details.”

The truth is, before my son got into trains, my preconceived idea about little boys liking trains is that it was sort of… nerdy.

But now I have been converted to the rough and tumble world of trains.

With all the soot and metal and crashing and American history, not to mention that most of the cast of Thomas and Friends is male, I no longer think trains are a dorky theme for my son.

So this election season, please know where I stand on this issue. I strongly support my son and his enthrallment of locomotives.

My best advice for anyone making travel plans for this upcoming holiday season, see where the closest train museum is and take your toddler son there.

If he has not yet been introduced to the world of trains, then make today the day.

Can I get a woot-woot?