Tag: Parenting

  • Summer Camp and Growing Up

    The wife and I got back from dropping the kid off at her all girls Summer camp. It’s a sleep away camp and she loves it. I can honestly say that she looks forward to it all year. When she gets home from camp, we get a month, or maybe two, before she starts talking about how she can’t wait to go back.

    This year, unlike the previous two, the kid wanted me and the wife to come into camp, so she could show us around, and this way, we’d know what she was experiencing, and put a place to the locations she had told us about. You see, the two previous summers, the kid has wanted to go into camp alone, and do it all by herself. We were and still are, all for her independence and if this is the healthy way that she starts to break away from us, we’re all for it. Still hurts a little – we want her to still need us, but the right thing is that she needs to become her own person, independent of us.

    So, this year when she wanted us to come in, we were a tad taken aback. We weren’t going to say no to this invitation, but still a little surprised that the third year in, now she wanted us to see it.

    Growing up in Texas, I barely knew anyone who went to a sleep away Summer camp. There were Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, but those usually took place over a three-day weekend, and were about getting badges and stuff. Sleep away camp was about having fun, or at least that’s what TV and movies made it look like. Besides, sleep away camp seemed to be something that only happened in the Northeast. Down in Texas, we spent three months sleeping in, watching tv, riding bikes through the neighborhood, and playing until dinner time. Oh, and trying to stay out of trouble.

    So, I was curious what camp is like.

    And what I learned from my daughter was nothing. I could see it dawn on her as we parked the car and started to cross over the river to get to the camp that she had made a mistake bringing us. She got all tense, wouldn’t talk (and our kid loves to talk), and when we did ask her a question, she would only give us one-word answers. She wasn’t behaving like herself. When we got to her tent, a group of her friends came running up to her, and they all started hugging, laughing, and talking about what they had been up to – the kid returned to her normal self. She is a good kid and pulled away from her friends to show us her tent and we helped set up her bed, but the wife and I could feel her was desperate to get back to her friends. So, we gave her a hug and a kiss, told her to have fun, and watched her run off to her friends.

    I still have no idea what the camp is like.

    Which isn’t true, as the councilors and the staff were great and did show us around, and made us feel very welcome. But I didn’t get to see the camp from the kid’s perspective.

    And as the wife and I drove back to New York, I told my her my theory why it was a mistake to bring us into camp. See, I get that kids want to share stuff with their parents, and our kid is no different. But that camp, for the past two years, had just been hers. We had dropped her off, and she crossed that river by herself, and everything we knew about camp, she had to tell us. We stayed on one side, and she got to go to the other. It was her private place that only she knew about, that she had experienced alone – it was her thing, not ours. I think she had her first realization that in life there are some things you don’t want to share. That you want to keep all for yourself.

    That’s true for me. There are things that I have experienced that are mine. That I hold onto and I cherish. They’re not nefarious experiences; they’re just mine, and they make me happy.

    The kid is beginning to build those memories for herself now. Which is good. She’s growing up.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    (Saw it written and I saw it say…)

    I may have mentioned it before, but the plan this Summer, before the kid goes away to camp, is to get the living room painted. And I am one who believes that one of the best lessons we can teach our kids is that sometimes you have to do things for your family that aren’t fun; such as painting the living room. It needs to be done because the last time we painted was ten years ago, right before the kid was born. So… it’s time. There will be patching and sanding, and taping and painting. When me and the wife did it, we completed everything in two days. My guess with the kid is that it will take us four. I don’t want to rush it, because we will make some mistakes and have to go back and clean them up, and I also need to occupy as much time as possible. These summer days can be boring.

    And one of the other ways I am trying to kill time with the kid is having her work on her soccer skills. She had a very good first year playing soccer for her school team, but she didn’t start, which annoyed her. Truth of the matter is that there were girls on the team that were better players than her, simple because these girls had been playing for a couple of years already. As I explained to my kid, if she wants to start, she has to work harder, and up her skills. To my relief and happiness, the kid accepted this challenge – she likes competing and winning. I do want her to getting a starting position on the team, but I am more proud of the fact that she likes working hard to achieve something that she wants.

    And as we are now in Summer, and family road trips are coming, the pressure to build a playlist is growing. The wife has one that she has been working, and has been teasing us with selections while around the home. Even the kid has shown off her growing list of all the different artist that she’s found. That leaves me. I have yet to start, but I already have a bit of dread in me about this. Mainly because I seem to really only pick the same twenty songs, over and over. I can admit that my range of music hasn’t not grown and expanded as I have gotten older. But really, what I really want to do is just listen to albums. I used to take road trips and bring all of my Beatles CDs, or Led Zeppelin, and just go from start to finish – listening to how the band progressed. I used to do that with Oasis and Soundgarden, too. Since iPods and smart phones, I don’t listen to albums anymore, and I miss that. But, the game is about making playlists for these road trips, so I need to go and search out some deep cuts.

  • The Bored Days of Summer (Unedited)

    We got three days into Summer Vacation, and the kid announced that she was bored.

    “There’s nothing to do”

    “No one to talk to”

    “Nothing to watch”

    “Nothing to read”

    “Nothing to listen to”

    I think you get the idea.

    Not surprised to hear her say this. All kids get bored when they have too much time on their hands. When the get too much freedom, it becomes repressive. As I am the stay at home dad, I get the brunt of the kid’s complaints, and she looks to me to solve this problem of hers.

    My first reaction was to tell her that it’s not my job to eliminate her boredom.

    But as soon as I said that, it dawned on me that it really is my job to end her boredom. Look, if I don’t get involved then she will want to zombie out on the iPad, and that is the worst thing that could happen.

    I’m not saying that she won’t get on the iPad this Summer, but I want to limit that as much as possible.

    Now, I don’t want to create mindless things for her to do, such as dumping a bunch of chores on her. There is no joy or magical memories that come from that. No, what I want to do is encourage healthy habits while also spending time together. (She will help me paint the livingroom this Summer, so she does have one huge chore, but we’ve been talking about that for months now.) I want her to stay active, so we are going to go running, and work on her soccer skills. I also want to keep her reading up, so we need to set time aside for that. She’s brought up that she wants to go to a museum, so that will take care of the art side of things. And I want to encourage her to think about the food she wants to learn how to make, and then we can work on recipe testing.

    IN the end, what I know to be true is that you only get to have so many Summers as a kid. When the days are hot but not too hot, and the Summer feels like it stretches on forever. In two or three years, I really won’t see her over the Summer, as she’ll be involved in something, or will be hanging out with her friends. Until then, I want to make sure she has some memories of enjoying time with her dad. Doing stupid stuff while trying to avoid being bored.

  • That Nap Ruined My Day

    We all make mistakes.

    In fact, here’s the one I made today.

    The kid had a half day at school, so she was home by 1pm. Before I went and got her, I did all the tasks and errands that I needed to do; balanced the checkbook, did the dishes, plugged in and ran the AC’s, got the kid from school, and made lunch. I even wrote in my journal, and did a good bit of reading – caught up on some flash pieces I have been meaning to read and finished a book of short stories.

    The kid had some homework, and we both sat down on the couch to do it. I don’t do the homework, I’m more along for moral support, and encouragement. Anyway, as I was sitting there, being that I’m not needed a whole lot, I decided that I should start reading another book. I got about 2 pages into it, and I fell asleep. Now, it wasn’t a deep sleep, but it was 45 minutes. I only woke up because the kid nudged me to ask if I was sleeping.

    But for the life of me, I haven’t been able to get myself back in gear. It’s like I’m walking through sand now. I’m so sluggish and foggy brained. I had plans for the second half of the afternoon, but I can’t seem to focus. Honestly, it’s taken me an hour to get myself to just sit down and do this.

    Hell, I promised the kid we’d go running in the park, and I still have to make dinner. I thought I was going to review a story but that doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.

    I swear, if I nap for fifteen minutes, I am solid and refreshed. But anything over that amount of time, it’s like a crap shoot – God only knows how I’m going to react.

    I think I can blame this one on getting older.

  • The Act of Painting

    If you want to experience a hidden New York treasure, then you should go to the basement paint department at the Manhattan Home Depot on 23rd Street. At that location, you can watch New York couples implode as they try and pick out paint colors. It is a graveyard of relationships.

    The wife and I prefer the Home Depot in Yonkers. Less couple strife, and more space. We were there over the long weekend to pick the colors for our living room. We generally know the colors we want to use, now it’s just a matter of getting the correct complementary hues. And we did it all without an argument.

    Points for us.

    Which means that when school is out, I’m going to start painting the living room. But before the painting, there will be patching holes in the walls. And then cleaning. It’s a small apartment, so half the living room is going to have to temporarily hold all the stuff while I paint the open half, then a swap, and I paint the other half. Oh, and I have to paint the ceiling as well. I think I can get the kid to help… I think…

    I’m saying all of this because I have to psych myself up to it. It feels like a shit ton of work, because it is a shit ton of work. Will I feel better when the job is done? Most likely. Pretty much. Yes, yes, I will feel immensely better when the job is completed.

    Not that the whole job is a chore. The actual painting is enjoyable. The repetitive motion, the up and down, back and forth. Music helps, but the sound of the paint rolling on the wall has a satisfying quality to it. And in the end, painting is making a change, and change can be fun.