Month: May 2007

Parenting Myths #1 – Terrible Twos

Everyone knows about the supposed terrible twos. The stage of child development characterized by frequent mood swings, temper tantrums, and liberal use of the word NO. I’d like to dispel the popular myth known as the terrible twos.

I’ll be the first to concede that two year olds often have mood swings, tantrums, and love to say NO. Just tonight, I counted 17 “no’s” and 3 jekyll and hyde mood swings.

What makes the terrible twos a myth, however, is that there is nothing special about two year olds. The terrible twos actually begin as soon as a toddler can get around on his own and do his own thing, somewhere between 15 and 18 months. As far as how long it lasts, I can only speak with authority as far as 3 and a half years, and I can report that the terrible twos are still alive and well at that age, too.

Things Nobody Tells You About Being A Dad

Most dads and dads-to-be are aware of the usual duties expected of them. Changing diapers, getting up in the middle of the night, being a human jungle gym. But there are many more realities that are impossible to predict or understand until you’ve been at it a while.

  • You are always the last one to eat. First you need to make sure the kids have their food. Then, you need to sit at the table with them to make sure they stay in their seats. Only after they have turned the table into a mess do you get to make your own dinner. And by then, you’ve finished off their cold hotdogs and mac & cheese so you aren’t hungry anymore.
  • If you want to eat adult food, you’d better 1) eat quickly and 2) hide. I eat Rice Krispies in the morning huddled over the sink so the kids can’t see what I’m doing. If I ate at the table, they would immediately stop eating their breakfast and demand to eat Rice Krispies “just like Daddy”. As cute as that sounds, it isn’t so cute when they only get a few in their mouth and the rest go on the floor to be stepped on and ground into the carpet.
  • Forget about watching sports while the kids are awake. It’s a well established fact that kids are not interested in something until you are. They will be very happy playing in the playroom, that is, until I turn on the TV to check the score. At that instant, they immediately stop playing with toys and want to watch Wiggles. I can’t wait until they get older and actually want to watch the game, at which point I will turn off the TV and say Time for homework!. Let’s see how that like that.

Potty Trained For Good This Time?

The potty training roller coaster finally reached the top of the track again. After a seeming low point last weekend, when my son pooped on the floor, just 4 feet from the toilet (I don’t know why I did it, Daddy), we have had 5 accident free days in a row! I credit a new incentive program where he got a star sticker every day, and once he had five stickers, he got a toy guitar. We talked up the guitar all week, and today was the big day. So far, so good. But, I don’t think he’s pooped in two days, and it’s awfully quite upstairs right now…

Getting a preschooler to finish their dinner

I have written about using bribes (uh, incentives) to get my kids to do what I want. Here’s a twist on conventional wisdom that I’m eager to try out. Usually, we use dessert as the incentive for eating their dinner. “Finish your vegetables and you can have a cookie”. This worked for a time, but now it seems, to a preschooler, that the work involved to finish all the vegetables isn’t worth the wait for a cookie.

So, throwing convention on its head, I’m ready to offer the dessert up front to get it out of the way. Then, as long as he’s hungry, he’ll eat the vegetables anyway. It’s just twisted enough to work, especially in the mind preschoolers, who are so honest and trusting.? After all, who else would admit to stealing their brother’s toy if I just ask?

Superhuman Parents

We’ve all heard the stories where parents perform amazing physical feats, bordering on the superhuman, when their child is in need. For instance, the mother who lifts a car to get her baby out. I had my own superhuman experience this weekend, and while maybe not as impressive as lifting a car, it was still extraordinary by Suburban Daddy standards.

Suburban Mommy and I took took the boys (a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2) to the park to fly kites. We bought them months ago and were waiting for some warm weather to try them out. Thing 1, never having flown a kite before, instantly took to it and before long had his Spiderman kite at full height.

After a while, the inevitable happened. He lost hold of the string and the kite took off on its own. It began drifting away in the steady breeze, drifting over a baseball field. It was well into the outfield when I realized it was headed over the home run fence, which, if it reached, the kite would be lost forever. I had to catch that kite!!!

At that point, Suburban Daddy took on almost superhuman powers. Seeing that the gate to the baseball field was locked, I scaled the huge, four foot fence in a split second, and made an all out sprint for the dangling string, hovering just off the ground and headed over the home run wall. I knew I would get just one chance to make a diving grab at the string. I ran as fast as I could (running itself is a superhuman feat these days for me), but it wasn’t enough, and the kite went over the fence.

Luckily, the string got caught on the fence, so all I had to do was walk over and pull it off. All the superhuman climbing and running was unnecessary. In my son’s eyes, Daddy saved the day. In the eyes of any bystanders (hopefully there weren’t any), I was the idiot who climbed a fence and ran across a field to save a $1.99 toy.