Control Freak and Daddy Not a Good Mix

I used to hate kids.

Well, I hated unruly kids. Ok, I actually hated the parents of unruly kids.

Now, I have sympathy for them.

In my previous life, it would not be unusual for me to visit a Skyline Chili by myself. I’d hunker in with my USA Today sports page and my five-way chili and look to lose myself for a half hour. Then, just as I was about to bite into that tasty cheesy-chili concoction, some kid would start wailing. Or start running around the restaurant. Or just be annoying in general.

This scenario played out in many ways in many places. It could be the seat next to me on an airplane. It could be the line at the post office. It could be the movie theater. It could even be my own house when some relative or friend brought their kids over.

One time, I was on vacation with a good buddy and his family. We went to a seafood restaurant and his 2-year-old proceeded to take every butter packet out of the big dish on the table and throw it under the table. One by freaking one. His parents acted like nothing was happening. I was incredulous.

As a former know-it-all, I would get extremely frustrated with the annoying behavior and blame the parent.

Shame on me.

Last night, I took my daughter out for her 1-year birthday. She loves macaroni and cheese and a nearby restaurant, the Keystone Grill, happens to specialize in that. We thought it would be nice for her.

She spent the first part of dinner opening the menu, paging through it and then throwing it down on the ground. Again and again.

She spent the rest of dinner eating macaroni and cheese with her fingers and dropping the majority of it on the ground. She was a cheesy mess when it was all said and done. Then, she topped dinner off by throwing her sippy cup on the ground. Over and over.

My wife and I basically ignored her behavior. We picked the cup up over and over. We picked the menu up over and over. Eventually we would take them away. Occasionally, we would say “No.” Sometimes, we tried to divert her attention to something else.

I’m sure people thought we were bad parents. What they didn’t realize is it could have been much worse. Take the cup or menu away, try to feed her with a spoon when all she wants to do is shove a fistful of macaroni in her mouth – these types of actions could lead to a crying meltdown.

The truth is, I have become immune to some of the bad actions of my 1-year-old. I overlook things as to not make them worse. 

One thing that I am starting to grasp is that kids of a young age do not have the ability to determine right or wrong and cannot be taught to be responsible for their actions. This is hard for a control freak lie me, but I am giving into this notion.

You ever try to reason with a 1-year-old? Sydney gets this look of consternation on her face like, “Dad, why are you talking to me in this tone?” Then she goes right about doing what she was doing in the first place.

She doesn’t understand sticking her face under water in the bathtub can kill her, how is she going to understand that throwing her sippy cup in the floor is a no-no?

Trying to "teach" her only makes it worse.

Dad: “Sydney, I am taking this sippy cup away because you keep throwing it on the ground.”

Sydney: "Huh? I'm 1. I have no idea what the words coming out of your mouth mean."

Tears. Wailing. Until she gets the sippy cup back. Then quiet, except for the occasional throwing of it.

So, as parents, we make a choice. I don’t mind bending over to pick up a sippy cup every now and then, I guess.   

Sydney is starting to get whiny. Especially for her mother.

Sidenote: Yeah, this hurts. Mom leaves the room, daughter cries. Dad tries to play with her, read to her, watch television with her, Sydney cries. Mom comes back into the room, Sydney quits crying. Dad realizes he is nothing but chopped liver and starts crying himself. End of sidenote.

So, when Sydney starts whining for her mom or crying for no really good reason, my inclination is to stop her annoying behavior. My attempts range from reasoning (Sydney, this is not how we act in this family. You can’t get what you want by crying.) to stating my case (Sydney, your mom is not the only person in the world. I am a good guy. Give me a chance!) to yelling (STOP CRYING! ARRGGGHHH!) to giving a soft tap on the butt to get her attention and telling her "NO!"

Sydney’s reaction to these various methods of control range from continuing the bad behavior, to increasing the bad behavior to laughing at me for thinking my soft tap on her behind would mean anything to her.

You can imagine how this plays with me. Especially in public. As I have said before, I do not like to be embarrassed and have all eyes on me. When Sydney gets going, I get flabbergasted and that makes the situation worse.

More than once, my wife has had to come to my rescue. She picks Sydney up and pulls her away as I sit wondering what the hell I am doing wrong as a parent.

Being a control freak and a dad to a toddler do not really mesh. One of my friends pointed out to me the other day that her teen-age son does not always, shall we say, do the right thing. Some of those screw ups have involved the police. She said this used to frustrate and mortify her because she felt it was her fault and a reflection of her as a parent. She would immediately dive in to help and get control of the situation so she would not look bad to her peers.

Now, she realizes he has his own personality quirks that have nothing to do with her parenting. He is not a clone of her, but his own individual. And, he can solve his own problems.

By the way, she has an older daughter who has rarely ever given her trouble. Don’t we all know families where one child is an angel and the other is devilish? You can’t have been a good parent to one and a bad parent to the other, right? So it really is more about the personality of the child as opposed to you as a parent.

Take it a GIANT step forward. Some kids grow up to be great successes in life, career, love, etc., but they have brothers or sisters who are criminals or drug addicts or unemployed or thrice divorced. Raised in the same environment, but drastically different. Nature wins over nurture.

Anyway, my friend got me thinking that the same logic applies to my 1-year-old. My daughter’s whininess, or even a public fit, are not indicative of my parenting. I do not have to be a control freak and immediately jump in and fix the situation.

At least that is what I am telling myself these days.  

This is not an excuse, mind you. This is a philosophy until Sydney gets old enough to truly know right from wrong and can understand consequences, punishment, etc. I don’t know what age that starts, but that is when the idea of discipline starts.

My brother, Little Dick, does a really good job with his 5-year-old. I’ve seen him in a restaurant and when the kid gets whiny, they go to the rest room to talk it out. He also effectively uses “time out.” The kid is well-behaved.   

Another friend of mine gets creative with the punishment. He has a young boy who likes to play video games. He becomes these “characters” in the video games. You can actually purchase the characters in real life; they are little toys. When the boy misbehaves, dad takes away a character and his son can never be that character again in the video game. That really sucks for a 4 year old.

That’s just a tool he uses. This guy has the best behaved young boys I have ever met. When he talks, they listen. It probably doesn’t hurt that he was a chopper pilot in Afghanistan for several years. When you are dealing with the chaos of WAR, a couple of unruly kids is nothing.

Other parents I know have kids who are old enough to know better who behave terribly. Those parents – well, they suck and I still hate them. They are giving us all a bad name.

But to those of you I maligned when you had your babies or 2 year olds or even 3 year olds at Skyline or on the airplane or in line at the post office, I have two words:

I’m sorry.   

Birthday Bash? What's next, a Mercedes SLK?

Sydney's first chocolate chip cookie. She has developed her father's messiness. Imagine when the cake comes!

Brooke and I have come to our first major disagreement when it comes to raising our child.

The birthday party.

If you have been reading this blog for any period of time, you know how our disagreements end. So, I will skip the suspense and tell you that Brooke wins. We are going to have a “big” party for our 1-year-old daughter. But I am participating under protest.

I expected to have disagreements with my wife on how to raise our child. We are human. We disagree on a lot of things. For example, she watches every reality television show ever invented, from “So You Think You Can Dance” to “How to Cheat on Your Husband and Not Get Caught.” (Hmm.) I can’t stand reality TV. She loves her new Ford Explorer. I think it lacks pickup and prefer my Honda Pilot. She likes to share our food when we go out to dinner. I stand ready with a knife to stab her hand as it reaches for my plate.

But raising a kid is serious business, so I hoped for as few disagreements as possible. This may be wishful thinking. I have seen how she raised her dog, after all. Murphy was allowed to sleep in her bed with her. Eat from her plate. Bark at anything that walked by. Sit on the couch (to the point where actual humans sit on the floor so as not to disturb him).

I, of course, raised my Vegas the opposite way. He was never allowed on the bed unless I invited him. He never, ever got on the couch. He hardly ever barks and when he does, it is usually for a good reason. And, when I was eating, he was taught to keep an appropriate distance.

Once Murphy moved in, all that great training went out the door. His bad habits have migrated to my dog. And Brooke has facilitated this. She is the only woman I know who feeds the dogs from her plate and then angrily wonders why they are either under her feet or in her face every time she tries to eat lunch or dinner. Hmm. Could there be a correlation?

Anyway, we have had very little disagreement when it comes to Sydney. But the Aug. 30 birthday is a big one. I am not one for big birthday parties. The thought of a dozen kids rolling around in the Hepatitis C-ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese makes me shudder.

I don’t ever remember having a big birthday party when I was a kid. My mom says I did when I was a toddler, but I can tell you that from what I can remember – maybe 5? – I do not remember having more than one friend over on a birthday. Most of my birthdays were just with my family.

As I got older –10, 11? – it meant going out to eat. There was a little Italian restaurant on the other side of town mom would take the family to for a celebration. If we had the money. Remember, we were so poor we went to Tiny Tim’s family for a handout at Christmas.

There was no freaking Chuck E. Cheese when I was a kid. We couldn’t afford a skating party. If someone showed up in our neighborhood with one of those gigantic inflatable jumping playgrounds, I can guarantee someone would stick a pin in it and ride off on the party pony while it deflated.

I don’t know what Brooke’s childhood was like, but given that she grew up in suburbia with $400,000 houses, I take it huge birthday parties were as common as BMWs in the driveway. To say we grew up in different worlds is to say Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have a lot of secrets.  You haven’t even scratched the surface.

I know this for sure: Brooke has bought into the present propaganda concerning birthday parties. Most people would. For parents, birthday parties are all about keeping up with the Joneses.

I know someone whose child turned 1 last year and they catered a party. Yes, catered. About 50 adults attended, drinking wine and beer. In reality, it was a party for mom and dad, not for the kid.

The propaganda is never more prevalent than on the Sprout network for kids. They sing happy birthday to kids on a daily basis, running their names across the bottom of the screen. Sydney is being indoctrinated with the philosophy that birthdays are huge events that require tons of screaming kids, an inflatable castle, a pony and a dad walking around with a dazed look of confusion.  

And that’s where I come from on the subject of birthday parties. I don’t need a party for my sake. And Sydney doesn’t even know what a birthday is, let alone what day hers falls on. She’d have as much fun playing with a box as she would with any new toy she receives. She won’t remember it one hour after it ends, let alone for the rest of her life.

Maybe I am just trying to avoid the inevitable Sweet 16 Party with a Mercedes SLK in the driveway. I’ve caught a few episodes of those reality TV shows in passing while Brooke’s been watching. I’m never going to be able to afford that kind of outrageous birthday bash, so I might as well start crushing her dreams at an early age so she has low expectations as she gets older.

Am I a party pooper? Probably. That’s the great thing about being married to the uber-positive, raised-in-the-suburbs, Pollyannaish, life-is-a-bouquet-of-roses, let’s-give-our-kid-the-Beaver-Cleaver-life Brooke. She balances me out. Sydney gets the best of both worlds. My glass is half empty. Brooke’s is half full. Sydney’s is overflowing.

Maybe Sydney will be like me. I’ve always preferred to ignore my birthday, not celebrate it. I don’t like all the attention it brings. My wife likes to take me out to dinner. That is fine with me; I don’t want or need anything more. One birthday I spent walking the 5-mile loop at Lunken Airport. How is that for celebrating?

I kind of hope my daughter adopts my attitude. How about a nice dinner out at Red Lobster with mom and dad, or a trip to the Reds game with your parents and maybe one friend?

But, until she can make those decisions herself, her mom and dad will make them. Which, if you have been reading this blog for any period of time, means her mom will make them.

The invitations are being printed. The cake will soon be made. The relatives have been invited. And yes, the alcohol will be purchased.

Daddy will need it.