parenting

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I, Too, Was Once An Angry Zombie Dad

July 22, 2012 at 12:45 pm , by 

20 months.

During the first 15 months of my son’s life, I was essentially in survival mode.

No matter how positively I narrated this thing, I felt like a souvenir mug that had fallen on the floor, shattered, and then was superglued back together. Everyday.

I was never really one of those dads who went around saying, “I love being a dad! It’s tough, but when you come home at the end of the day and see that ‘little you’ looking up at you with those big eyes, it makes it all worth it.”

Yeah, that was never something I said nor thought. (Especially because my son is not a mini-me.)

Ah, but then my son turned the magical age of 15 months old. My life instantly got better!

Since then, I’ve been getting a better understanding now of why people enjoy being a parent; not just simply learning to deal with their new, demanding responsibilities.

Everyone has their own struggles and “default sins.” One of mine is greed. Not really with material possessions, but with my time.

If you’re familiar with the popular book, The Five Love Languages, then it’s important to note that “quality time” is probably my main love language.

When you become a parent and begin caring for an infant, the concept of quality time basically ceases to exist.

I was so disgruntled by the fact that my wife and I had to sacrifice meaningful conversations that didn’t revolve around our son, as well as, just even getting to hang out with each other on the couch and watch a movie without hearing that annoying “baby buzzer” going off.

Despite being a very outgoing guy, I’d say I’m just as much an introvert as I am an extrovert. I require a decent amount of solitude to function properly, where my deep and random thoughts can be born. So yeah, that pretty much went out the window too when my wonderful son arrived.

But once we were brave enough to incorporate “the cry it out method“ for our son and he instantly started sleeping through the night, we began getting our lives back.

When my son turned 15 months old, he started making me feel validated as a parent. It was like on Lost, realizing that pressing the button in the hatch every 108 minutes actually mattered and did good.

I finally began seeing a connection between my input as a parent and his output as a child. Man, I needed that.

My zombie days are over. I paid my dues. I have earned the right to have a magnificent son who daily plays “Props” on Whose Line Is It Anyway? with me.

I get to watch him do weird stuff like put a plastic rabbit on top of a toy car as if it’s normal.

And he depends on me to fix his hair in the morning and scare him with a Spiderman mask during playtime.

Oh, and have I mentioned that he loves learning how to “go pee-pee” by watching me? I’m not sure if I’ve written about that before, but don’t worry, there’s plenty more “watching Dada pee-pee” material coming up soon.

But hey, I’d rather being an oversharenting parent than an angry zombie dad.

Grrrrrr! Sorry, just had a flashback…

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What Is A “Dad Sabbatical” And Why Does It Just Feel Wrong?

July 21, 2012 at 3:35 pm , by 

20 months.

Any minute now, my wife Jill and my son Jack will be landing in Philadelphia, then driving about an hour to a place called Downington.

One of my wife’s sisters and her family lives there and is having a surprise birthday party weekend; unless this blog post spoils the surprise. Awkward…

I will pick them up again on Wednesday from the airport. Until then, it’s just me here.

It’s only been a few hours but it already feels like Chernobyl.

Normally if I’m sitting in my living room writing a blog post on a Saturday afternoon, hearing nothing but silence, it means that any second Jack will be waking up from his token 40 minute Saturday afternoon nap.

Well, it’s been more than 40 minutes now.

I thought I heard him cry a minute ago but it was just a poodle in the townhouse next to us.

This is my “dad sabbatical.” It’s pretty weird so far.

Granted, I am happy that my wife will get to enjoy these next several days with her sisters she rarely gets to see; no thanks to scientists who have yet failed to invent a practical teleportation device, despite us all living a dozen years past the year 2000.

(No flying cars or hover-boards yet, either. Back To Future Part II made it very clear what life is going to be like in the year 2015. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do!)

Her side of the family will get to meet Jack the Toddler; as opposed to Jack the Infant, who they met a year ago when we all met up in Sacramento where they are all originally from.

It worked out better for me to stay here in Nashville this time around.

(Especially if the rumor is true that we may both need to use a couple vacation days next month to make an appearance on a morning talk show on NBC. Oh well, I probably just now jinxed that for us. Now it won’t happen. Great.)

You would think I would appreciate this “time to purposely do nothing” more than I do. But I’m still in culture shock right now.

Sure, I miss them both tremendously. Right now I feel emotionally exactly what I’m supposed to.

But also, I feel guilty.

For nearly 2 years I have constantly been a dad. No pause button. And for 4 years, I’ve been a husband. No more than just a few nights apart due to the occasional business trip.

And now for half a week, I will have no real responsibilities as a husband or a dad. Yeah, it just feels wrong.

Okay, time to go see Batman. Because that’s what a 31 year-old dad on sabbatical evidently is supposed to do with his free time.

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Playing Props On Whose Line Is It Anyway? Toddler Edition

July 20, 2012 at 11:01 pm , by 

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Will My Oversharenting Embarrass My Kid Later?

July 19, 2012 at 11:19 pm , by 

20 months.

This past weekend my son Jack and I were out behind the house and he saw a pipe dripping water.

In the normal way that a toddler feels it’s necessary to shout out every noun they recognize, or think they recognize, he proclaimed,

“Pee-pee!”

It was just days before that I had published the oversharenting-laced Toddler Potty Training 101: Father To Son, in which told how I am currently psychologically potty training my son by letting him watch me go potty.

If you haven’t read it yet, I invite you to. Especially if you want to feel a little bit awkward.

But it’s not like my son’s Elmo Goes Pottybook gets very specific in showing little boys exactly how to go pee-pee. And if it did, that would be more than creepy.

Clearly, it’s my job to teach my son by example on this. Have you noticed how little printed info there is on a father teaching his toddler son to go potty?

I did. That’s why I wrote about it. I think it’s one of those things that is normal in the household but remains largely unspoken.

Needless to say, I have little shame when it comes to oversharenting.

But I think it’s because I just deem it as self-deprecation; which scores you “cool points” in today’s world of parenting.

While some parents oversharent by giving an hour-by-hour status update on their kid’s wet and dirty diapers, when I oversharent, it tends to either involve me being weird, like scaring my son with a Spiderman mask… or it involves him pointing (and laughing) at me in my birthday suit.

When I oversharent, I try to make sure it doesn’t revolve around my son, but instead, my own feelings of inadequacy or habits of non-kosher behavior, as a dad .

I’ll make fun of myself all day long, but it’s important to me that I don’t harmfully overexpose my son or my wife; despite sharing them with the world in 400 words 6 days a week.

Granted, Jack isn’t even 2 years old yet. It’s not like he’s going to remember any of this anyway.

I was recently asked if I’ve ever thought about how one day my son will be old enough to read what I write about him and that he might be embarrassed by it.

No, I haven’t really thought about it. But no, I don’t think he’ll be ashamed, either.

Not at all.

In fact, I think of how cool it would have been had blogging existed in December 1982 when I myself was only 20 months old.

I mean, I do have this awesomely retro picture below to speak a thousand words for me.

But I think my son will totally dig the fact that those “unrememberable” first years of his life will be preserved like Han Solo in carbonite. The funny things he does now, like think that a dripping pipe is going pee-pee, are innocently humorous and normal for his age.

Not strange or shameful or unmentionable. Not destined for censorship; not even by my son a decade from now.

If I thought something might embarrass my wife, or eventually my son, I simply wouldn’t write about it.

For me, that’s actually what constitutes as crossing the line.

I’m here to embarrass myself when applicable, not them. But even then, I’m wondering if I can actually embarrass myself in my oversharenting.

I have yet to reach the point of shame.

Stay tuned, though. I’m sure I can at least come close.

Especially as we venture further into potty training.

 

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Transitioning My 20 Month-Old Into TV Time

July 19, 2012 at 4:57 am , by 

20 months.

I have always felt very strongly against allowing my son to watch TV before the age of 2 years old.

Yes, I am one of those quirky parents who believes there is a link between boys under the age of 2 watching TV daily and Autism.

As a father of a little boy, I am very aware that boys are 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with Autism than girls.

While I know there are many factors as to why, it’s interesting to point out that males compartmentalize their thoughts separately from each other, while females constantly intersect theirs.

That explains why when you ask a guy what he is thinking and he says “nothing,” he is probably telling the truth. Because he is currently in his “nothing box.”

But if my understanding about females is correct, they can never truly “think about nothing” the way males can.

In other words, by default, the male mind already works like a TV. If he needs to think about a different subject, he has to change the channel in his head to that subject first. But the female mind works more like a laptop computer with at least 8 windows up and running at all times.

She is used to the constant multitasking in her brain. Meanwhile, guys are built to be task-orientated, so they stay on that certain channel until the job is done, or change the channel and come back to it later, as if during the commercial break.

The theory is that during those very crucial first two years of a boy’s life, he is still developing his “how to properly change the channel in his head” ability.

So a boy who is exposed to a TV during that crucial time of development, with changing channels, switching camera angles, and no natural pauses in conversation, can get confused and the channels in his head start changing on their own.

Another reason I am convinced of this theory is explained in an article for Slate Magazine, where it is revealed that the reported number of Autistic cases shot up in 1980 (just a few months before I was born), when cable TV and VCR’s became easily accessible in American households.

The number of Autism cases were higher in states where the weather was gloomier (like Oregon and Washington) where children were more likely to stay inside and watch TV.

Interestingly, cases of Autism are nearly non-existent in Amish communities where TV’s are nowhere to be found.

I also support this article in Time magazine which says that TV cuts down on a toddler’s “talk time,” according to pediatricians.

Well, my son is now 20 months old; that’s just 4 months away from that “TV is now safe” milestone of 2 years old. So recently, I have been more flexible on his exposure to TV.

He’s still very obsessed with Elmo. Fate would have it that Sesame Street is on now Netflix’s live streaming. (We don’t have cable or a satellite.)

One of his new routines is for me to turn on Sesame Street in the morning while he plays with his toys or the Wii remote. I keep the volume very low as to not interrupt any conversation between the two of us.

The funny thing is, he doesn’t actually watch the show. He totally doesn’t have the attention span for that right now.

All he really wants to do is just point at the screen every once and while and say “Elmo” or “dog” or “noodle,” referring to Mr. Noodle in the Elmo’s World segment.

My son likes the idea of watching TV, but when given the chance, he doesn’t actually watch it.

Here’s the twist: I really look forward to the day he does want to. I haven’t watched a Disney Pixar movie sinceToy Story 2 came out on DVD like a decade ago.

I have a lot of catching up to do!