First, I apologize for not posting the past 2 months.  I had a death in the family, was sick for 6 weeks (no really, I was- and it sucked)- it’s been a bit crazy around the “cubicle”.  Since moving and starting my new job...I’ve been working a little more, and having less time to do things I enjoy...like blogging, home brewing and watching the Bulls- though they give me enough reason to not watch.  I choose instead to spend time with “my ladies”.  That and I’ve been in a “rut”...not knowing what to blog about...feeling instead of posting about how busy I am that nothing was better.

But I have to talk about this...to seek advice, to vent, to let it all out.  Not because I’m frustrated, well maybe a little...but mostly because it’s freaking funny.  I’ve written about my daughter going through her terrible two’s a couple of times.  I’d link to other entries, but I’m lazy.  No, tired (for reasons listed above).  RM’s (short for rug monkey) Toddlerzilla act has evolved, seemingly overnight, into something more dastardly...the Back-talk Monster!!!  (Cue screams, and dramatic music)

The “terrible two” tantrums have become more shorter in length...still funny...but shorter.  They’ve been replaced with the back talk.  Oh sure, I know it’s only the beginning...she hits 13, and look out.  The back talk is a little frustrating, but harder to not laugh at...the thinking is, laughing reinforces back talk, so don’t do it.  Instead we each put on our best poker face.  Which confuses me, how does my kid have a poker face?  And know how to play poker?  Who has she been hanging out with? 

We stare each other down...me: “please stop playing with your food, and eat...please.”
Her: “no.”
Me:  “sweetie...it’s not play time.  please finish your dinner.”
Her (headshake, funny angry look):  “no.”
Me:  “(Full name), stop pretending your corn-filled spoon is an airplane crashing into your hair.  Please eat.  Stop painting the table with your mashed potatoes!”
Her:  “uhhhnnnn. no”

This continues until we reach “the choice"..."do this or you go in timeout”.  Which inevitably ends in...yep, you guessed it, time out.  My daughter and the time out chair seem to have bonded...she visits daily...multiple times some days.

RMs reaction is comedy gold!  It’s really not her response...more her tone/ inflection, and facial expressions.  It’s extremely hard to keep a straight face, let alone trying to reason with her. It’s like toddler debate really, and to be safe...9 times out of ten...plan on losing.  Atleast I do...helps keep things in perspective. 

Anyone else dealt with the back-talk monster?  Any tips?  Stories?

In the grand scheme of my family...I know I’m outnumbered 2-1...I’m quickly learning to choose my battles, to take a stand, and when to run and find a safe place.

So I was reading this post by Jesse.  In it, he talks about kids, manners, getting into trouble, being a role model.  These are some of things that I am constantly thinking about. 

I find myself in the position of getting worked up and then disciplining not out of clear-headed thought, but simply because I’ve reached some sort of internal limit.  At one point in my early fatherhood, I thought it would be a neat goal to always be consistent with discipline.  And it’s easy to say that if LittleBrother spills X ounces of water outside of the tub Y times, then he will be removed from said tub.  But then the real world generally doesn’t work that way.  At least I don’t.

Typically we have a great time together.  But there are days...when BigBrother will whine every time LittleBrother touches him.  When LittleBrother will not behave.  When they don’t get along.  When they whine for 30 minutes before eating a green bean. 

Every once in a while, those days result in me disciplining on of the kids and then immediately questioning my parenting skills.  The other day as an example.  Overall a great day.  Kids were good all day.  Then at some point they became whiny.  Nothing big.  But about 40 little things.  And at bath time, LittleBrother splashed after being warned.  Specifically, he stood up, did his best Chippendale’s impression and swung the wash rag around while it was sopping wet.  I immediately took him out of the bath.  He responded by screaming in horror for 5 minutes. 

Every second of those 5 minutes was spent trying to figure out if I handled that correctly.  I still don’t know.  I just wonder if my Dad ever had those thoughts.  I never even conceived that my dad thought he was possibly doing anything wrong.

Back in the mid-90’s or so, I remember there was a television commercial set on a calm and serene lake. It was a nice sunny day, the sun glistening over the water, birds were singing and a quiet breeze was blowing in the background. On the lake there were two men fishing in a boat, just relaxing and passing the time. The 30 something year old guy then turns to the older man and says “Dad, there’s something I want to tell you.” The father then asked “What is it, son?” The son went on and said “Well, Dad. You’re my only dad...and I just wanted to tell you that…I love you, maaaan!” and started sobbing loudly. The dad glanced over at his blubbering son and replied “Son, I love you too…but you’re not getting my Bud Light.” There were a series of similar commercials where the Bud Light dude ultimately ends up professing to another male “I love you, maaaan!” It seemed that after those commercials aired, it was okay for us men to tell our male buddies that we loved them. Provided of course that you emulated the same tone of voice as the Bud Light dude and used the catchphrase “I love you, maaaan!” It was an acceptable and ‘manly’ way to actually say how much you cared about your guy friends.

Fast forward a decade or so later and I no longer have any qualms saying in a straightforward manner to my close guy friends or male relatives that I love them. I’m constantly telling my 2 year-old son how much I love him. Now that he’s talking a lot more, he’s also starting to say “I love you daddy!” back to me as well. There was this one particular time earlier this month when we were playing, laughing, running around the house and just having a great time together. At some point he just spontaneously stopped what he was doing, ran towards me, gave me a huge hug and said “Daddy, I love youuu!” In that moment I actually got a little choked up. The look of affection in my son’s eyes quickly turned to dismay when he saw some of my tears. He became deeply concerned and said, “Daddy, why are you so sad?!?” He then ran to my wife and yelled “Mommy, there’s something wrong with daddy!” My wife and I had to explain to our little boy that people not only cry when they’re sad, but that sometimes people will also cry when they’re really, really happy. He was a bit puzzled by our response, so we asked him if he had ever been so happy that he felt like crying with joy. After a brief pause, his face lit up and he exclaimed “Oh...like baseball!” Yup, nothing like beer to spread the love among your buddies and baseball to bring a dad and son closer together. 

I saw a statistic recently that 70% of 4-year-old children have been on a computer. That includes my son. He started out on GCompris, a free educational suite of programs for kids 2-10 years old. It’s really a nice program, and is both entertaining and educational. There is even a section that has activities which help a kid learn the mechanics of using a computer (like mouse clicks, arrow keys, typing, etc.).

We moved on to XMoto, a rather addictive motocross game. It’s one I like to play, and naturally Junior wanted to join in. He’s pretty good at wrecking his bike, but there is the occasional level he can actually do a little bit on. And then there was PBS Kids. There is so much to do there, as well as at PBS Kids Sprout, that your lap will get tired holding your kids while they play and watch video clips.

Unless they don’t need your lap, that is.

Junior now knows how to open Firefox, navigate to his favorite kids site (via a bookmark button), and play or watch videos. All by himself. His reading, while very minimal at this point, is good enough that he can recognize certain key words, or at least guess based on the first letter. Another favorite pastime is simply to watch mom’s photo screensaver, using the arrow keys to navigate through our family pics. Even little Joy (almost 3) knows how to do that.

My feelings are mixed. On the one hand, as someone who felt like he missed out on the whole computer and IT boom, I’m happy that they have exposure to the computer from an early age. On the other hand, there is of course the feeling that I’m letting our kids drift too close to the big black hole that is the computer and internet, whose pull is difficult (if not impossible) to resist.

I’m curious what you dads do out there as far as computer guidelines and boundaries.

P.S. And no, we have no plans to introduce the words “Internet Explorer” to their vocabulary.

Anxiety is an unpleasant, emotional state that involves a complex combination of emotions that include fear, apprehension, and worry. It is often accompanied by physical sensations such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, or tension headache.

The definition above is from wikipedia.com.

It is also is what my six year old sometimes has at nighttime.

She was adopted from China at 9 months old. So we are not even remotely sure if this has something to do with her very early months. What we do know is that she is terrified of a fire in our home.

We have tried calming her before bedtime.

We have tried talking to her about the causes of fires in the home.

We have tried the “Plan” approach. (What to do if there is a fire.)

We have added smoke alarms to all of the rooms in the house.

We have added two extra fire extinguishers to the upstairs.

Now with the help of a school counselor we are working toward her inner dragon!

This is really helping quite a bit. She gave us a book entitled Anxiety Cure: An Eight-Step Program for Getting Well and it seems to be working, little by little. In one of the first steps it talks about addressing the issue and to write in a journal. When our daughter gets ready for bed we ask her to “rate” the size of her dragon. Then depending on the size we start a wizard approach. Meaning that we get her to dream about the wizard getting the dragon to stop being mean. Tell the dragon to stop making her scared of things. If the dragon starts taunting her she is supposed to ask the dragon to not talk to her or she will leave the room. If the dragon keeps being mean then she is supposed to spell the dragon to a time out. This seems to work the best! Since her dragon is over 100 years old then the dragon gets a time out for 100 minutes! By the time the time out is over she is fast asleep. Sometimes the dragon will wake her up, but not too often.

We started this whole thing at the beginning of the year and she has been writing in her journal most nights. There are nights where she doesn’t “share” that the dragon is bugging her and that is very nice. The book also talks about the dragon always being there and that it is okay for it to be there, but it shouldn’t keep trying to “eat” your fears, which is it’s food. So if you have fears it will come up and start it’s feeding process. Meaning that the more it taunts you the more fear you will release and the more the dragon will grow. If we can cut some of that process down then she will become stronger and stronger. Now this is not to say that all fears are bad, it just means that the when they come up at night it is a way to help deal with the control part of it. Hopefully she will be able to control this dragon and become a stronger person overall. We both know this will not be an easy road and it will probably involve professionals in the future. We have just started the whole thing, just the tip of a very big iceberg sitting just above the water line.

My hope is that it will all work out and the fear of the fire slows down just a bit!