A friend of mine called me out of the blue last week (he lives in Canada and was in town on business) to ask what I was doing for lunch. Fortunately, I didn’t have any clients and was free. Lunch was good; the conversation much better.

My friend is one of the most involved fathers I know in the real world. No, that’s not true. He IS the most involved father I know in the real world. He is warm, loving, affectionate, and engaging with his two sons. He has a very good relationship with his wife. When he and I talk, I always get the feeling I’m getting a preview of what my life will be like in a few years. What he is dealing with today, is what I will be dealing with tomorrow. Want to know what I learned?

IT NEVER ENDS!

The trials and tribulations of parenting never end. He is still working on helping his children get their homework done different from the way he used to do it when he was a kid (Mr. Procrastinator, my friend is). He is still trying to help them be the best they can be. He is still struggling with the same sorts of challenges I am, just on a slightly bigger scale.

When I told him this, he told me about how his father still talks with him and his brother about parenting issues. Being a parent is a lifetime gig with constant adjustments throughout our lives.

You’re probably sitting there, reading this, thinking, “DUH! If this guy is so smart how did he not figure that out already?”

I actually asked myself the same thing (though not nearly as kindly as you did). You know what I realized?

I thought parenting ended because my parents stopped parenting.

We all have assumptions we picked up from our families and until I had that lunch with my friend, I had no idea that was one of my assumptions. Once I started going to school regularly, my parents pretty much stopped interacting with me. By the time I was in high school, they were done. Somehow I had picked up they had given up on parenting and I internalized that parenting stops when school really gets going. But it doesn’t.

Thank goodness I had that lunch with my friend and realized that now. Can you imagine the shock I would’ve had if I found out when they were in junior high?

What are some of the assumptions you have learned about parenting from your parents?

I had my son, Benjamin, and a friend of his in the van on the way back from somewhere.  I had to stop at a post box next to the post office to mail a letter.

When he saw the post office building, Benjamin said to his friend, “Josh, have you ever been in that post office?”

“No, I never have been in there,” he answered.

“Well,” Benjamin continued, “You should go in there sometime.  It’s really nice in there, and . . . but you have to wait.” He quickly found that ‘waiting’ was a good segue to his favorite topic of late:  trains.  “Yeah, uh, I like to wait . . . for trains.  Yeah, I just like waiting for ‘em.  I don’t know why.”

Though Josh, too, is enthralled by trains, I think our diversion to the post office was concerning him; he only said, “Are you sure this is the way to my house?”

Later during our drive, we went by the building of the local model railroad club.  I pointed it out saying, “Josh, you’ve been there a couple of times at least, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, we should go there again,” Josh stated, looking at the building longingly.

Maybe I shouldn’t have pointed it out.  I quickly noted, “I don’t think it’s open right now.”

He was still optimistic, “I think it’s open, maybe tomorrow or maybe some day.” He turned to Benjamin, “I’m going to work there.  Aren’t you going to work there?”

“Well, no, I’m going to drive a train.” Benjamin has told us many times he intends to be an engineer when he grows up.  Not the M.I.T- graduate-independently-wealthy-discovers-the-ultimate-alternative- energy-source type but rather the smudged-face, overall-wearing sort — not that there’s anything wrong with that!

“No.” Josh giggled, “You’re too little.  You can’t get in one of those trains.” Josh assumed Benjamin intended to be a driver on an O- scale model train.” He continued, “You just stand and make the trains go around on the tracks.”

“No, Josh, I’m going to be a driver of a real train engine,” Benjamin clarified.

“Well, don’t you want to work there too?  You shouldn’t just have one work.  Then you could have two works.  Two works are better than one.”

I began to chuckle about what I thought I’d heard, but I had to check, “What did you say, Josh?”

“Two works are better than one,” he repeated.  “Isn’t that right?”

Has it really come to that?  Are kids today so anxious about the future of our economy that they’re planning on needing two jobs just to make ends meet?  Well, as long as both ‘works’ involve locomotives.

I answered, “I suppose it is, Josh; I suppose it is.”

As I stated in my first post I am not the biological father to my kids as they were conceived with the assistance of donor sperm. In the next few weeks we will be taking a family vacation to a theme park here in the Northeast. We really have never taken a family vacation before and this one will be a little different than typical vacations.  You see my kids are meeting for the first time their biological half sibling.

Each of the kids is under 5 so how much they understand is debatable. At the same other than again stating to my kids that a donor created them and that the donor also helped create the young girl we are meeting I don’t expect to get into too much detail.  The idea is simply for the kids to meet and then deal with the details.

For extended families created unfortunately / fortunately due to divorce or even the death of a parent (where the surviving parent remarries and then has kids with their new spouse) the issues of half or step siblings is generally accepted. As a result siblings, step, half or full are just part of their lives and the linking parents are flesh and blood tangible persons.

In the case of donor conceived families the donor is anything but flesh and blood unless a known donor was used and part of the equation.  The circumstances creating these children is currently much more titillating and seem by some as controversial.  As a result the instance of meeting half siblings without a physical linking parent is that much more amazing and life affecting.

The children are not brother and sisters as they have no relationship to date but meeting creates the base for that relationship and I want to make sure we do it right and not confuse these kids.

To say I am nervous on a number of levels is an understatement.  For not only are the kids meeting but my wife and I will be meeting the little girl’s mom for the first time even though we have been trading e-mails and voice mails and talking live on the phone for several months. As compared to my own sister who is stuck with me if this woman does not like me or my wife it could affect any possible relationship the kids might have growing up and knowing each other.

It should be an interesting vacation.

The baby monitor: A useful and often annoying device aimed at providing comfort to worried parents.  I hear stories told of days long gone, when parents couldn’t hear—and didn’t care to hear—the shouts and begging of a child in bed.  Nap time was nap time, and no amount of pleading or tears would allow the little person to triumph in the eternal battle of parent vs. child. Then some moron invented the baby monitor.

Thanks to whoever that may have been, my nerves are eternally on edge when my daughters sleep.  My ears, straining to pick out any groan or grunt emitted from a child’s mouth, ache from the effort.  But I wasn’t always this way.  I’ve been conditioned.  I’ve learned that if I stifle a cry quickly enough, the kid is likely to go back to sleep instead of waking from a nap or keeping me up precious minutes in the middle of the night.  So I listen, and I strain, and I jump into action when needed.  In our house, the baby monitor is always on, and I’m always listening.

Unfortunately, I listen even when the girls aren’t home, because there’s a speaker in my office.  I never think to turn it off.  It hums with occasional static and glows with its tiny red light.  Hardly a nuisance.  But the other night something strange happened.

The baby monitor talked to me.

At around 11:30, as I nestled up to the computer to type more lines of unending, indecipherable code, I heard a voice.  The girls were NOT upstairs.  Nobody else was home; at least, no one of whom I was aware.  Still I heard the voice.

It was a child’s voice, crying and begging for something unintelligible.  I stood and stepped closer to the speaker.  The voice went quiet.  I sat down, thinking myself insane, when I heard it again.  More crying.  More begging.  I listened for several minutes, trying to make out the words.

Suddenly there were other voices.  Another child began shouting with the first.  I returned to the speaker, but the noise stopped.  I went upstairs to listen, but heard nothing.  The house was dark, and the world slept.

I returned to the basement and listened.  The voices were faint, crackly, filled-with-static, like an old vinyl recording.  I began to panic, to imagine the impossible, to think the past had somehow infiltrated the baby monitor and a previous episode of my life was replaying itself for my ears alone.  Or maybe I was just tired.

In any case, the next voice to appear was a woman’s, and despite the static and crackling and obvious displeasure in its tone, I found it rather soothing and remarkable.  But WHAT THE HECK was it doing in my baby monitor?!  Who were these people?  Whose voices filled my office with this haunting, supernatural aura?  And how could I make them stop?

After thirty minutes of insanity, I finally unplugged the speaker and went to bed.  The voices in the static told me I needed sleep far more than I realized.

It was at that moment, when my head hit the pillow and a warm breeze blew in through the window, I finally understood.  Whether the answer revealed itself to me or whether I deduced it the exact second before the facts became apparent I will never know.  But gusting in through the bedroom window, caught on the breeze, was the sound of two fussing children and a mother calming them down.  I went to the window and searched the neighboring houses for bedroom lights shining through drawn curtains, but I never found the responsible dwelling.

Most baby monitors run on a similar frequency.  In the absence of my own children’s voices, our baby monitor decided to sneak a listen at someone else’s.  Seems even the baby monitor gets lonely when the children aren’t home.  Happens to the best of us.

Thankfully, it seems parenthood hasn’t made me insane just yet.

I thought I’d take advantage of this forum where Dad’s are blogging about their many adventures (misadventures?) and addressing the highs and lows of parenting to answer a question and seek the input from others on this same issue.  I must confess to not being caught up on all my blog reading so that if I repeat what someone else has written on here, I apologize.

The question is, “What advice do you have for first time fathers?” As my wife and I are directors for a young married couples Sunday School class at our church, we have occasionally had the privelege of this type of discussion with several new parents.  Most of the class are newlyweds with the prospect of children way off in the distant future, but every once in a while one couple either decides to make the transition to parenthood or they make the transition without making a formal decision.  Either way, it often comes to my wife and I to provide some direction for them or to simply reveal a few secrets that should make their life easier or at least more fulfulling.

It’s always my privelege to reveal to the hesitant future fathers that “Fatherhood” is likely one of the most difficult jobs that they will ever face.  I say “likely” because, as a Mathematician, I can’t speak for firefighters rushing into burning buildings or police officers dealing with criminals day in and day out.  However, the job as a father is an enormous challenge and as with anything that is difficult but worth doing, it is as rewarding as it is demanding.

So here are a couple of tips I have in mind:

1.  Time:  There is an old saying that it’s not quantity but quality.  Wrong!  It’s both.  Our families need us as fathers.  They need us there as much as we can possibly be there.  It drives you to the edge of sanity in many cases but it is all worth it if we raise children who see their father as present and approachable.

2.  You’re still married:  With the new addition to the family, your attention will be divided.  The whole dynamic of the family changes.  You can’t just up and take your wife out at the drop of a hat.  Romance becomes a planned activity which makes it all the more difficult to incorporate.  But it must be incorporated.  Children will strain the relationship and so it is a necessity that there be time for you and your spouse to communicate, regroup, and rekindle the “chemistry” that brought the kid along in the first place.

3.  Dryer:  I learned early that a car ride has a magical effect on the screaming child.  But with gas prices skyrocketing, we found that for at least two of our kids, setting the child in a securely-fastened infant carrier on top of a running dryer most often simulated the car drive enough for them to go to sleep. Besides, sometimes you just don’t want to go out for a spin at 2:00 am. This secret came in handy dozens of times for us.

Commenters, throw out your suggestions as well.  As the parent of a 5, 3 and 1 year old, I am no expert and could probably still use some tips.