November 3, 2013 at 2:51 pm , by Nick Shell

2 years, 11 months.

Dear Jack,

On Friday, Mommy and I went to your school for our first ever routine parent teacher conference. Most of what Ms. Lauren told us about you, we already knew:

That you’re obsessed with trucks and you love to be the line leader.

But what is a bit suprising is that, at school, you never stop talking!

As for me, I was a fairly quiet kid until about the 4th grade; so I sort of assumed the same would be for you.

Nope.

In fact, you’re so talkative, that Ms. Lauren told us, sort of half-jokingly, that you’re the tatttletell of the class.

When she tells another student to do something, you inform her of your classmate’s failure to comply with the instructions.

It’s not a big surprise, considering what I do for a living is very HR-based. In essense, I tattletale on adults all day long at my job in the office…

Of course, not everything you chat about in class is informing your teacher about your classmates. You also put your teacher in this situation where she is constantly having to make sense of the stories you tell her.

She hears the detailed list of cars that you and I see on the way to school each morning.

Ms. Lauren commented to Mommy and me, “Are there really that many pink trucks and SUVs in Nashville?”

Probably not.

It’s just that you never forget seeing one the first time and it ends up in the regular rotation of your conversation play list.

Nonetheless, you always have plenty to talk about at school. Here I thought that was just with Mommy and I at home, since a lot of the times we see you interact with others, you are shy.

Now we know, you’ve got a lot to say, and Mommy and I aren’t the only ones hearing it.

Love,

Daddy

May 15, 2013 at 9:11 pm , by Nick Shell

May 14, 2013 at 9:32 pm , by Nick Shell

2 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

Sometimes you call me “Miss Daddy.” Slightly less funny is the fact you call Mommy “Miss Mommy.”

Given that most of your daytime hours are spent at school, it’s easy to understand that how natural it could be for you to want to call me “Miss Daddy.”

(That’s somehow a pretty fitting term for you to use, considering Mommy and I just bought you a pink sports coupe with a silver skull on the front, namedBone Crusher.)

It’s not like there are male teachers at your school, to familiarize you with the term “mister.”

Actually, I’ve never thought about it before, but my honest feelings about there being a male teacher at a daycare… that would be pretty weird and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it.

But hey, that’s all speculation anyway. I suppose it’s simply me being gender biased in that I only feel comfortable with the thought of  female teachers at your school.

Now that I’m thinking about it, though, I would imagine that if your daycare suddenly hired a male teacher, there would instantly be a good number of parents pulling their kids out and moving them to another daycare.

I think it’s one of those nearly irrelevant conversations that could cause quite a stir on Facebook, but in reality, I would bet most moms and dads would agree that they wouldn’t feel comfortable with a male worker at their kids’ daycare.

A lot of people would like to believe that gender equality in the work force is always an attainable thing, but the free market tends to decide otherwise. I predict that male daycare workers are bad, or at least a gamble, for most daycare businesses.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been conditioned to distrust men I don’t know around little kids; especially my own. If I wasn’t weirded out by the thought of a male daycare worker, then I would be weird.

Love,

Daddy

P.S. I published a follow-up to this 24 hours later called How I Was Wrong About Male Daycare Workers, which discredits much of what I said here.