Tag: Children

  • Putting the Kid to Work

    I’m putting the kid to work today. We are going to paint baseboards. See, I was able to paint everything in the kid’s room; purple walls with white doorways and the windows. The only thing I wasn’t able to get to were the baseboards. Hence why I’m putting the kid to work. Also, I would like her to take a little ownership of her space, as well. You know, make her feel that the room belongs to her. But I also know that it’s just fun to play with paint.

    And the Summer is winding down. There is only three weeks left to the kid’s Summer vacation, and I am sure this won’t be the last time I will say this, but the Summer has gone by really fast. This week, we’ll do our back to school shopping, and next week we have our meet and greet with the kid’s new teacher. Then Labor Day, and the school starts.

    And the cycle starts all over again.

    Which means it virtually Christmas, right?

    What I am trying to remind myself is that I have limited, one on one time with the kid. She’s getting older, becoming her own person, and won’t want to be around me forever. As she grows, our relationship will change, has already changed actually, and that’s something I need to get used to.

    I can see why some parents never want their kids to get older, or change. (Just stay small and innocent, you know.) I like the fact that she’s getting feisty and opinioned. This sword cuts both way as wanting her to be her own person means that she will have to pull away from me. This isn’t a new story in the world, but it is one that I am experiencing for the first time.

    But for today, we’ll paint baseboards together. And I have a feeling that she will make me listen to The Descendants soundtrack, again.

    (Oh Yeah! If you read this, clearly you have, and if it struck you as entertaining, then if you could be a pal and leave a like, or a comment, or share it to the furthest reaches of the UNIVERSE!)

  • After Effects of a Vacation

    I read an article yesterday that most people are happier leading up to their vacation, than actually on their vacation. I took a second to think about that, and I knew that this was true. Yes, the best part of a vacation is counting down the days. Once you get where you are going, then everything goes sideways.

    This year, we talked to kid about this. How, the one of the best parts of being on vacation is when things do go wrong, because that is when you make new discoveries. I know that isn’t 100% true, but I wanted to plant the idea in her head that when things go wrong, it becomes an opportunity to try new and different things. I think it sort of worked. There wasn’t too much complaining, but the trade-off was that she wanted to spend a large amount of time on the family iPad.

    Oh well…

    But we did experience something new with the kid this year when we came home from vacation; she was a little depressed. The kid is seven now, and not little anymore, both physically and emotionally. We all have known that feeling of coming home from a vacation; if you had a good time, then there is that feeling of letdown; a little sadness of having to come home and go back to the old routine. That’s normal.

    This year was the first time that the kid experienced that. And she didn’t know what to do with these feelings. She was sad, sullen, and even had a little bit of a breakdown, and cried in her room for a bit. The wife and I talked, and made sure that we were on the same page on how to deal with this. The most important thing was not to make her feel ashamed for feeling sad. We let her tell us in her own way what was wrong, and let her just experience feeling bad. Then when she calmed down, we started talking about the fun we had, the memories we created, and what we should do with the rest of our summer.

    I know we can’t stop her from feeling bad, or sad, or experiencing emotions that are hard to put your finger on. But we can help her understand that having strong feelings is normal, and can be a good thing. And that there are constructive ways of dealing with them.

  • The Selfish Act of Parenting

    I’ve had a rough couple of years. From my mother’s death, moves, career changes, and a pandemic, it’s been a lot. On the whole, I’m good, but like everyone of late, I do have rough days, where I do despair and wonder, what am I doing with my life?

    One of the things I tell myself, or remind myself is more accurate, is a question I was asked a while ago from a good friend; Why can’t your purpose be to become the best father that you can be? Let that guide you, and everything else will fall in line to that.

    Like I said, I have to remind myself of that. And I can fully admit that a mess up often as a father. I do my best, I’m not perfect, but I hope that raising a daughter who knows she loved and supported in what she does will go a long way in helping her become a strong and independent woman.

    I thought about that this morning as I was making breakfast for the kid, and we talked about what we would do on this first day of Summer vacation. And then I thought about the selfless act of being a parent… But is it selfless?

    Follow me on this; if by choosing to be the best father I can be is to give myself a purpose, then isn’t the quality parenting that my daughter receives just a positive side effect of a selfish act? I’m not choosing to be a good parent strictly to be a good parent, but if by choosing to be a good father to my kid makes me feel like a good person, than aren’t I putting myself first?

    I can admit that these thoughts are a “Chicken or the Egg” quandary. Does it really matter who gets put first if the end result is that the child receives quality parenting?

    Do I have too much time on my hands, and thus think about details that have no effect on the whole?

    That’s all possible.

    (Oh, and if you like what you read, please take a second to like, share, or leave a comment.)

  • Short Story Review: “One Sun Only” by Camille Bordas

    (The short story “One Sun Only,” by Camille Bordas appeared in the March 7th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Having kids is easy, raising kids is hard. And on some days, you screw everything up, and it really sucks. Every time we make a mistake as parents, which is often, the wife and I kid each other that whatever the transgression we just inflicted on our daughter, that it will be the reason she goes into therapy. My mother would joke/not-joke that when I was in therapy, she was getting blamed for everything. Not everything, I would tell her, Dad made a lot of mistakes, too. Kidding each other was a big part of our relationship, and so was making lots of mistakes.

    I identified with “One Sun Only,” by Camille Bordas. It was a story about a middle-aged guy, trying to make it as a writer, dealing with the death of a parent, raising his kids while also making sure his children were coping with the death of their grandparent in a healthy way. (Holy Crap! It’s like this story was written for me!) But also, the story was about the relationship that the grandfather has with his son, and his grandchildren. The grandfather was a famous painter, and art played a big role in his dealings with his family. Of the two grandchildren, the older one, Sally, had the same artistic interest as her grandfather, and thus he showed her the most attention. Though the younger grandchild, Ernest, had the artistic skill, he was not interested in the form, which caused a distance between grandfather and grandson.

    Essentially, this was a story about death, and how different people deal/handle/cope with it. There was another death in the story, a school janitor who had a heart attack and dropped dead in front of Ernest and his classmates in the cafeteria at school, so the theme of the story was driven home pretty hard here. The most authentic parts of this story were the interactions between Ernest and his father, the narrator, especially when Ernest was drawing at the kitchen table toward the end. My only objection to the story was that the children point out how sad their father was, but I never felt the “sadness” was identified, given an example, or even addressed. It was just pointed out, and left at that. See, that stuck in the back of my mind as a red flag. Sally was given ample time to show how she was dealing with the grandfather’s death, and the climax of the story was clearly about Ernest ability to cope, but nothing for the father. The father was seen taking advantage of the money he had inherited, as he had bought a new apartment, and was taking a year off from work to write, but not how he was emotionally handling all of this. I do know that when a trauma occurs, some people make immediate changes in hopes of dealing with the emotions, which I felt was what Bordas was hinting at with the father, but he seemed to be enjoying these changes even though his children said he was “sad.” It’s like one puzzle piece was missing that would have tied all three together in their mourning.

    Also, this was a story about parenting; Both the good and the bad. Pushing your kids, and nurturing them. Tough love and understanding. The grandfather and father were not saints, and their parenting styles were opposite, but not completely wrong. For all the faults of the grandfather, he was using his skill set to raise his son the best he could. And his son was doing the same thing with his children. The story did leave me feeling hopeful for these characters. That they would get to the other side of this, in their own way.