Jack loves reading. In other words, he loves looking at the pages of a book for the purpose of identifying the animals so that he can make their appropriate sounds.
The book he is currently obsessed over isThe Beginner’s Bible; a children’s cartoon version of the stories in the Bible. Why does he insist of reading it all the way to daycare and back everyday? Because he’s just that spiritual of a toddler? Or…
To practice his animal sounds.
A couple of minutes into the car ride each day, I hear “Sssssss…”. That means Jack sees a picture of Satan, as a serpent, tempting Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit.
Five minutes later, it’s “Bzzzzzz…”. Yeah, that’s the Seven Plagues on Egypt; the gnats and lice to be exact.
I’ll hear various spurts of “Pffffttt…”. That would be Jack’s very impressive impression of what a camel sounds like: There are plenty of random pictures of men riding camels throughout the book.
Eventually I hear “bah-bah,” Jack’s version of a donkey, which means Jesus is making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem… on a donkey, of course.
And then for the rest of the book, there aren’t so many animals anymore; mainly just bearded men in robes talking to each other.
Each time Jack gets to this point, he just starts laughing.
It took me a solid week to figure out what was so funny. I’m pretty sure it’s because Jack has never seen a man in real life with a big bushy beard.
So he’s laughing at the brown sheep’s butts on men’s faces. Or, beards, as we recognize them in the non-cartoon world.
Yes, my toddler son leads his own Bible study twice a day in the back seat of my car. Technically.
I’ve heard several fellow critics ofmedicating kids for ADHD say that those children never really learn to cope with their problems; therefore explaining why 23% of the 6 million plus children currently on these untested-yet-FDA-approved psychiatric drugs go on to test positive as bipolar.
Actually, I never really thought of it before, but yes, at some point a child needs to learn coping skills. But how and when?
Leave it to me, Mr. Overkill, but for the past couple of weeks now, I’ve been deliberately teaching “coping skills” to my 17 month-old toddler.
My son Jack is in a stage now where he is testing me on whether I will help him when he doesn’t actually need my help.
For example, he will roll his Hot Wheels car underneath the couch where he can still reach it, but he will whine and look at me, as if I should save the day. He hears the same thing from me each time:
“Son, use your coping skills. You can reach it.”
Similarly, I recently helped Jack harness his bravest coping skills to learn how to pull himself up on our coffee table. It’s now a new hang-out spot; along with the fridge.
Other times, he whines about something neither he nor I can control. Like when I’m driving him home and he drops his book on the floor.
“Son, use your coping skills. There is nothing we can do about your toy until we get home.”
The simplicity of what I am hoping to teach him is this: I will help you unless A) you can figure out a way to deal with it yourself or B) it’s something no one can control.
I guess ultimately, my “coping skills” concept is a blatant rip-off of the famous Serenity Prayer:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
If you are familiar with The Dadabase, then you know I am a huge advocate of letting your infant “cry it out” in order to sleep through the night. While Jack has been sleeping through the night for the past 10 months of his 17 month long life, he still tests me during his weekend naps.
You guessed it: I say it all comes down to coping skills.
“Son, use your coping skills. I’ve wrapped you up in this blanket and held you for a minute. You’re very tired and you know you need sleep. I’m setting you down in your bed now and you’re going to learn to fall asleep on your own.”
He “copes” for about 5 minutes then he’s asleep.
My son will experience a life full of “no’s.” Whether it’s me, his friends, his teachers, future employers, and even God Himself.
I know this because at age 31, I’m still struggling with my own coping skills.
Jack’s blue “snowman blanket” from Target has been his main blanket since he was born, but now it has earned a regular spot in his daily toy rotation.
It’s not so much of a security blanket, since we won’t let him leave the house with it unless he’s sleeping somewhere else that night.
Instead, it appears to be a fun toy that doubles as a sleeping aid. As a toy, Jack can carry it around for the purpose of being able to play Peek-a-Boo with us at any given moment… repeatedly.
And should he wear himself out in the process, which tends to eventually happen around nap time, he likes to abruptly fall down on the blanket and pretend to sleep.
Granted, Jack won’t actually fall asleep on it. He is simply communicating to me that he is ready for me to take him upstairs to put him in his crib. That leads to a 10 minute “cry it out” session before he’s out cold for a predictable 40 minutes.
It’s a curious thing that he sleeps a solid two hours each weekday at daycare, but how we’re lucky to get two 40 minute naps out of him during the daytime on weekends.
Yesterday was the exception. He slept for 2 hours and 49 minutes; for no particular reason.
We thought we were being sneaky trying to get away with watching an episode of Lost while he napped (it was the one where Hurley finds the VW bus).
But we made it all the way through it, then started the next one, then my wife fell asleep for an hour while I started watching a documentary on Netflix about the life of people who have made a living by being extras in movies, called Strictly Background.
Nearly three hours. I called it a “grace nap.”
It’s a gesture of grace for us the parents; giving us an unexpected break from the typical routine of his. It’s our son giving us the opportunity to be bored; a rare privilege for parents of a young child.
Start noticing on Facebook, about once a week, a status update from a fellow parent joyously proclaiming that their kid slept for a period of time longer than expected. The grace nap is pretty much a big deal.
At least for me, the fact that my son carries around his blanket like Linus from Peanuts is more than just cute; it’s a beacon of hope.
After 90 minutes of napping together in a rocking chair in an upstairs bedroom at our friends Jamie and Peter’s house yesterday, my son Jack woke up slightly sweaty, drying himself off on my luxurious Italian arm hair.
He was disorientated. I could see him trying to figure it all out:
Why was he in a little girls’ bedroom? Why did he fall asleep in his Daddy’s arms as opposed to a crib? Was he still in a dream, like in the movie Inception?
Finally he looked up at me with curious eyes and plainly announced our mutual code word…
It’s recognized as the donkey sound only because of the almost sad, dropping tone Jack uses to imitate a donkey; not because of the word “bah-bah” itself, which doesn’t actually sound like a donkey.
By speaking our mutual, exclusive code word, it was as if to say:
“Okay, Dad. I don’t know how we got in this weird place. But you’re here too, so I’m sure you can find a way to get us out of here. Right?”
I led him downstairs to the living room where he remembered the school bus slide he was playing on earlier, before he got hit by the tranquilizer dart… metaphorically speaking.
He was safe and back to having fun. But he wouldn’t have left that room upstairs if it weren’t for us assuring each other with our code word.
How did “bah-bah” (with a dropping inflection) become our secret word?
Jack is in his car seat in my car for at least an hour every weekday. Sometimes when I haven’t heard a peep out of him in over 10 minutes, I check on him by using our code word.
He always answers back with it.
Then after that became normal for us (go ahead, give yourself a second or two to take that in) I started saying the code word when I pick him up from daycare every day.
It’s not, “Hey Jack, I’m here! I missed you son!”
It’s “bah-bah.”
Personally, I think having a donkey sound for a secret code word is pretty original. Especially for the fact that it’s taking the tone of one animal sound and masking it with the phonetic sound of another.
That would be like mooing a monkey sound; if that’s even possible.
Having a kid will make your life stressful; that’s for sure. But a child also brings a certain joy and humor you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.
Oh, hi. My name is Nick Shell and today is my birthday. I am now 31.
“Happy Birthday; may it be your best ever!” you might proclaim. And I would thank you.
But you see, April 20th is more than just a special day for pot heads to celebrate.
It’s more than just the day that Kony 2012 would have made its big reveal in the streets had society not outed the now infamous video as illegitimate.
My birthday is sort of like the cursed numbers are for Hurley in Lost. Bad things happen in the world on April 20th. Like on my 18th birthday:
Oh yeah, and guess who I share a birthday with: Adolf Hitler, born in 1889. Seriously.
(Also, Joey Lawrence; but I guess that’s not a bad thing.)
This is the day of the year that you should hold your breath as you check the news. If we can make it through this day without some kind of massacre, I’ll be amazed. In fact, by writing all this, I’m actively trying to jinx the “420 curse.”
So why did God choose such a dark day of the year for a an arguably normal and mild-mannered guy like me to be born? All I can say is that it’s comic relief to the world. It somehow provides balance in the universe.
And as I think about this concept of comic relief I can’t help but think of my son during the past 365 days in which I was a 30 year-old man.
Never has my life been more challenging, stressful, humiliating, exhausting, maturity-enforcing and unpredictable since he was born. It hasn’t all been easy.
During my year of being 30, in addition to the culture shock of learning by immersion what to do with an infant, I was unemployed for the first part of it, then I got a job, and I also got this gig writing for Parents.com writing The Dadabase, then had to move my family back to Nashville because of financial reasons, my wife’s car broke down half-way during the move and we had to buy a new car, and our roof caved in the week we tried to move back in our house in Nashville.
We eventually got back on our feet here in Nashville. Then we became vegetarians. And not that long ago, Jack had a febrile seizure.
Um… what else? I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
It hasn’t been a forgettable year; clearly not.
I’m ready for 31. I’ll just say that.
But back to my son serving as comic relief in my life. It’s the little stuff that gets me; in a good way.
Like when I watch him chew viciously on his toy plastic vegetables though he knows they’re just for pretending to eat.
And how he likes to sit in the fridge after he mows the carpet each day.
How sometimes on the drive home in the car, he’ll start randomly making donkey sounds after 20 minutes of silence.
My kid makes me laugh; even during some days or weeks or months I wish I could just fast forward through.
Here’s to hoping the world doesn’t end today. [Insert laugh tracks here.]
My current favorite song, as it relates to all this:
