Trying not to Raise a Kardashian

                                                            Nothing but sweetness, right?

How do you ensure your kid grows up to be a “nice” person?

It is not a rhetorical question – I hope you will give me your best advice.

My children are very different. Sydney is loud, outgoing, brash. Tyson is reserved, quiet, maybe even a little timid.

We met the Easter Bunny last weekend. Sydney ran to him and hugged him like he was her best friend. Tyson clung to my legs.

A neighbor whom we don’t know walked her dog by our house the other day. Sydney ran to the end of the driveway and started a conversation with her like they were old friends.

Tyson clung to my legs.

Their personalities, so far, are completely different. They are very stereotypical: Sydney is verbal and very smart with vocabulary. Tyson is quiet but is much better than his sister at math, puzzles and similar activities.

Their differences are evident in other ways, too, and that is where I am concerned. Take Christmas for example. Sydney tore through her presents like the Tasmanian Devil. As soon as she had the wrapping off one, she was reaching for another.

Tyson still had unopened toys weeks later. If he opened something he liked, he would play with it for the rest of the day, not worried about what he could have, but content with what he had.

You see where I am going here?

I have said it many times before: If someone were to offer Tyson a balloon, he would ask for one for his sister. He is THAT nice and thoughtful.

On the other hand, if Sydney saw someone offer Tyson a balloon, she would run up and steal it for herself.

She is THAT kind of kid.

This isn’t a learned behavior. Some of it might be from being the first born and having all the attention for nearly two years, but I think she was born like this.

Ask Tyson to help clean the room, he is on it. Ask Sydney to help and you get three hours of bargaining and procrastinating and outright defiance.

All I have to do to get Tyson to go to bed is set my phone timer to go off, no matter what time it is. He knows that when the timer goes off, he has to go to bed and he starts heading that way.

The timer is like the bell at a boxing match for Sydney. Time to start the verbal sparring in order to squeeze in another hour or so of play time. She comes out jabbing like Muhammad Ali.

Before you say, “You can’t let her get away with these things,” understand that I know that and I don’t. But my point is, I want her to act the right way without the threat, or distribution, of punishment.

Also, I have known kids who grew up in very strict environments, where they were afraid to step out of line or challenge their parents on anything. Sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, either. I’m not trying to turn my child into a submissive robot or someone who rebels with drugs or other felonious behavior to deal with overbearing parents.

She’ll get her fair share of groundings, or worse. But I don’t believe I can punish someone into being a good person. She has to come into that on her own.

  

More than once, my wife and I have looked at each other and asked, “How do we make her understand how important this is?”

I had friends visiting this summer and they have two older children who are respectful and very well behaved. I asked my buddy how he and his wife did it, and his answer was vague. Really, they simply tried to steer their children between right and wrong and hoped for the best. So far, it has worked. Or they just got lucky. Or both.

I asked another friend the same thing a few weekends ago. He and his wife have raised three daughters who are all on their own and doing very well as adults. His answer was much the same.

But how much of it is luck? I know siblings who grew up in the same environment. One is an empathetic soul who leads a successful life, while the other is a pathological liar who scams everyone in their path.

Some of it has to be the luck of the draw, right?

  

I spend a great deal of time trying to keep my kids safe. Sydney is so oblivious, she wouldn’t see a car coming until the Ford emblem was implanted on her head. Tyson would play football on our flight of stairs if I let him. They’d both put coins or balls or other choke-able items in their mouth if we weren’t watching them 24/7.

Safety is always the number one concern. It won’t change as they get older. I’ll worry about them experimenting with drugs or driving drunk or hanging out with some knucklehead who thinks Interstate 71 is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A lot of energy is spent on keeping them safe. Then, you worry about their intellect and how smart they might become. You spend hours reading books to them, playing online learning games and ensuring they are watching educational TV.

At some point, I am sapped of parental energy. Yet, there is still a mountain to climb: turning your kid into a “nice” person. Someone who respects others, cares about others and is not as self-absorbed as Kim Kardashian.

But then again, Kim’s doing ok. Maybe the selfie-centric way of life is the way of the future?

Screech!!!! Hold the phone. Pardon my interruption!

While I was writing this, my daughter just came up to me and gave me a nickle she had found on the floor somewhere in the house. Instead of keeping it, she gave it to me in “case you need to buy something for yourself.”

Not buy something for HER. Buy something for ME. What a quantum leap forward! Perhaps not all is lost.

Maybe 4 years old is a little too early to consign the fate of "incorrigible" to a child. Maybe I am worrying for no reason.

But just in case, feel free to send advice my way. I’ll be the clueless dad in the corner.   

Blessed -- In More Ways Than One

The second I saw Tyson post surgery, I knew things were going to be OK.

After his first surgery, when he was only 2 months old, our heightened anxiety turned to smiles as the surgeon explained how well things had gone. We were so happy, we took pictures with him to celebrate.

But when we arrived at Tyson’s room, the site of his broken body took my breath away. I stepped back out of the room to compose myself.

He actually looked dead to me. He was purple. His eyes rolled back into his head. He had a million wires connected to his abnormally still body.

So I prepared myself for a horror show as we took the elevator to the sixth floor last Friday to see our son after Dr. Roosevelt Bryant once again worked his magic on Tyson’s heart.

But the 2-year-old Tyson fared far better than the 2-month-old Tyson. This time, he looked more like his normal self, albeit with a 6-inch bandage holding his chest together and several wires monitoring his 25-pound body for post-surgical complications.

                                                                    First surgery vs. second surgery

Ecstatic is an understatement. We are amazed how well the surgery went and how quickly he rebounded.

I try not to make a bigger deal out of this than it is. I struggle with sharing fears of disasters that never materialize. I know other people have walked this path and still others walk more difficult journeys.

But damn, when it is your kid, it is your whole world. If you are ever going to make a big deal out of something – good or bad -- it is going to be your child.

So yes, there was, in fact,  a chance he wouldn’t make it through the surgery. Anytime you are being kept alive by a machine, things can go wrong. So, however small it might have been, there was a chance.

And, they’d told us there was a possibility – anywhere from 10 to 25 percent – that the surgery would screw with the electropaths of his heart and he would come out needing a permanent pacemaker.

But even at 25 percent, there was still a 75 percent chance he wouldn’t. So was I dwelling on the negative and too strongly communicating that to others?

After all, the surgeons at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center do about 300 open-heart procedures a year. They do far fewer Double Outlet Right Ventricle repairs such as Tyson’s, but, still, they clearly have experience that makes these procedures almost routine.

I don’t know. Maybe we made too big a deal of it. All I can say is, when it is your child, you tend to dwell on the negatives. The percentages become a blur of what ifs.

When my wife and I handed my boy over to the surgical team last Friday, we were both in tears. Whatever the chance, if there is even one iota of a possibility that you will not see your child alive again, it is almost too much to bear.

But this is Cincinnati Children’s, the third best children’s hospital in the country. The surgical team, from our gentle-giant surgeon, Dr. Bryant, to his assistant, Dr. Katherine Walters, to the anesthesiologists and the rest, worked a small miracle in our little boy.

An expected six-hour surgery became only four hours. Once they opened him up, they saw there was no need to fix Tyson’s original patch. The work Dr. Bryant had performed two years ago was still solid. They needed to only dissect some membrane and muscle and re-route a pathway to reduce pressure and even out blood flow.

This reduced recovery time. They were practically pushing us out the door before he was off the operating table. They talked of getting him up and moving the day after surgery. They were aggressive in discussing going home, despite our protests. We were concerned about his pain and elevated heart rate. He wasn’t eating or drinking. He was barely talking. He seemed angry at us, or depressed.

They were certain he would do better at home.

Turns out, they were right. One day after getting home, Tyson appeared to be his normal self. He is not sleeping well, still has some pain and is moving a lot slower, but he appears well on the way to recovery. In fact, we are already concerned about how we will keep him from running and roughhousing for the next six weeks as his chest heals.

For now, he will have regular visits to his cardiologist, Dr. Thomas Kimball, until we know he is fully recovered from the surgery. Then, we will get back into the routine of cardiac visits every six months to monitor his heart, each time hoping we don’t get told he will need another surgery.

                                                                             Dr. Roosevelt Bryant

Tyson is the kind of kid who, if someone gave him a balloon to play with, he would ask for one for his sister. He is an incredibly kind-hearted and quiet boy who is methodical and contemplative. He quietly plays with puzzles for hours. He has fun taking things out of a basket, arranging them, counting them and then putting them back.

He is meek. But his demeanor hides a ferociousness. I saw a nurse come in and take a blood sample from him. He never flinched, despite the fact she had to move the needle around to get enough blood.

During the whole pre-op, surgery and post-op, I saw him cry only on one day, the day after surgery. He was in a lot of pain and several times during the day, he whimpered. Through all of the rest, he was stoic.

As my favorite shirt of his says, "SOME DAY, I AM GOING TO MOVE MOUNTAINS." He will. He might even become a heart surgeon.

Some day, we are going to tell him about all the support he had going into that operating room.  We are collecting the pictures and messages and thoughts and prayers so he can some day know how many people had his back.

Those messages, thoughts, prayers and karma you sent our way over the last few weeks were like a wave carrying us through.  

Brooke’s co-workers made and sold shirts on Tyson’s behalf. Mine took a staff picture dressed in red in support. A fellow Heart Mom who sadly lost her child a few weeks after his first birthday brought us lunch in the waiting room as we anxiously yearned for some positive news on Tyson. The good friend who married us brought dinner that night. Others cooked for us when we got home. One friend of Brooke’s made us a couple weeks’ worth of dinners!

Both of our mothers came to town for weeks to help as needed. My daughter’s pre-school class made cards for Tyson, and the sixth-grade class at Brooke’s school each wrote personal messages of support to her. Some made you laugh out loud. Others made you cry at how caring and sensitive kids can be.  

And, the social media! It helped that Tyson's surgery got postponed to, of all things, Congenital Heart Defect Week. It provided the opportunity to spread even more awareness. "I'm a Tyson Supporter" symbols were everywhere, as were dozens of pictures of people wearing supporter shirts. Our story was being shared with lists of people we didn't know and then we began hearing from complete strangers who wished us well and told us they were in our corner.

If it is possible to feel both all alone and that you have an army of support behind you, that is where we found ourselves last Friday morning when we did that incredibly difficult hand off.

The byproduct of perhaps worrying too much, of maybe dwelling on the negatives and what ifs in too many conversations, of telling our story to too many people, was that a legion of support formed around us.

I’ll take that.  Every day.

Straight Out of TV Hell

One of the rare times they are not pestering mom and dad.

Have you ever tried to watch a movie with a 4 year old and 2 year old in the same house?

Check that. Have you ever tried to watch even a half-hour television show with the children bouncing around the house?

Thank God for DVR. If I couldn’t record and then stop and start a television show a million times, I don’t know if I would ever watch anything from beginning to end. I’d forever be trapped in a loop of NCIS crimes that occur but never get solved.

When I first discovered DVR, I thought its main use would be to prevent fights between my wife and I. Suddenly, I had this tremendous device that allowed me to stop whatever I was watching and look intent and concerned while my wife babbled on about her day. When she was done, I picked right back up where I left off. Genius!

But now that I have kids, the DVR experience has reached a whole new level. With approximately 36 interruptions every time my wife and I sit down to watch a show, the DVR is the only thing that allows me to stay up on the disturbingly new macabre cases Criminal Minds stars must solve.

As soon as we sit in front of the TV, chaos ensues. This is when the kids choose to fight. Or cry. Or need something. Or ask questions.  

It is “Mommy, can I have a drink?” or “Daddy, listen to this new song I made up,” every five minutes. Or, like clockwork, the dreaded, “Daddd--yyyy, coommmeee wipe me.”

Yes, she does it in a sing-song way.

Last night, in the middle of a Criminal Minds playback, Tyson, who isn’t potty trained and shows no interest, asked if he could pee on the potty. This necessitated in a 15-minute break from the show to watch Tyson NOT pee because he really never intended to. It was all part of the master plan the kids have to ensure mommy and daddy don’t stay current on The Middle and The Goldbergs.

Mind you, we actually only try to watch a show three or four times a week. Ninety percent of the time, both televisions we have downstairs are turned to Team Umizoomi or Little Charmers or some kid’s movie on Apple TV while we do parent things.

I get home about 5:30-6 p.m. Bed time for the kids is, hopefully, 9. I’m usually exhausted and ready to go down at 10. In between, dinner, baths, bedtimes stories, packing backpacks for the next day, etc. TV usually has to wait until the weekends or that rare weeknight when it all comes together just right.  

I currently have about 37 hours of taped shows on my DVR. They hang over my head like a guillotine. Will I max out without watching them and have to start erasing for new tapings?


Happened a lot on Time Warner. But Direct TV gives me more storage. Crossing my fingers.

My brother recently gave us some black-market gadget that allows me to watch pretty much every movie ever made. I can get movies that are in the theater right now! They may have Chinese subtitles or the sound may be a half-second off from the visual, but I get to watch Straight Out of Compton without going straight out of my house.


That is a nice treat for a couple who has not gone to a movie theater since Sydney emerged from Brooke’s birth canal four years ago.

How many shows have I watched? Well, I got half way through Black Mass. Did the FBI ever catch that Whitey Bulger guy?

And in Straight Out of Compton, I got to the point where NWA hit the airwaves with Fuck The Police.


That can’t go well for them.

That’s it. Two half movies. Not 2 and a half movies. Two HALF movies.

My wife, on a whim, picked up a RedBox movie while at the grocery the other day. We literally had to order our two children into the other room every five minutes in an attempt to get through it. We got about three-quarters of the way through and the DVD had a glitch, not allowing us to go further.

DAMN YOU, REDBOX!

That makes three movies in the past month where we have no endings.

When we moved into the new house, I signed up for Direct TV. They gave me a package with free HBO and Cinemax for three months. When that was up, I called to cancel. The customer service guy offered to increase my access to movie channels for the same price.

I laughed. More movies I can’t watch? Yeah, I’ll pass buddy.

At some point, these kids are going to be more independent and willing to play on their own. At least Tyson will. Sydney seems to need an audience for everything.

If they ever reach that point, I plan on catching up on a decade’s worth of movies and television.

Until then, if you see me, try not to dish out any spoilers on The Good Wife.

Things Dad Says....Over and Over and Over

I’m as popular with my kids as Ariana Grande at a bicentennial celebration. 

Why? Because I say the word “no” one million times a week. 

“No” is programmed into a parent’s DNA. It might not be the first word children say when they begin talking, but I have to believe it is the first word they understand.

Baby begins to cry? “Shh. Shh. No, no little one.” Baby grabs something that can kill them? “No!” Baby latches on to breast with the suction strength of an industrial Hoover? “Nooo!” Baby experiences explosive ass disorder? “Oh “Nnnoooo!!!!” 

  

It doesn’t stop at “no.” I am a human “repeat” button. In fact, I wish I had a string attached to my chest that I could pull every time I needed to utter one of my frequent sayings:

“Why are you being so loud? Use your inside voice.”

“Stop hurting your brother!”

“That is NOT how we act.”

“Did you wipe?”

You say it over and over and hope it sinks in. Usually, it does not.

Tyson has a new thing. He has this puzzle-like book, with the puzzle pieces being farm animals.  He’ll pick up the piece and ask, in his broken-English, barely-above-a-whisper baby gibberish, “Where does the cow go?” He wants you to repeat it to him – “Where does the cow go?” Then he takes it to the book and puts it in its place and shows you where it goes. Then he repeats the same thing with the horse and the pig and so on, and so on.

So I have said “Where does the cow go?” “Where does the horse go?” “Where does the rooster go?” “Where does the pig go?” a million times each in the past couple of weeks.

Forget reading a book. Forget watching a movie. (Why the hell do I pay for Direct TV?) I spend too much time pretending like I don’t know the cow goes into the freaking cow slot on the puzzle!

It got me thinking about all the other things I say over and over in the quest to keep my children on the straight and narrow – or simply from killing themselves. I’m sure my “sayings” are creating more bad blood with my kids than you might find at a Taylor Swift concert, but I am going to keep doing it.

Because my goal is to keep them ALIVE. And out of jail.
 

In that order.

Here are some of my most popular hits:

Stop hurting your brother!: My daughter thinks it is funny to squeeze her brother… really hard. Or to press down on his head…really hard. Or to lay on him in a way that will certainly suffocate him in about two and a half minutes. I don’t find it as funny, and neither does he.

Use your words.: I learned this from my wife. Apparently, this is something teachers use with young kids. I had never heard it in the 35 years before I met her, but now I use it several times a day.

  

My daughter has a tremendous vocabulary and is a verbal butterfly, flitting from topic to topic with ease. Yet, at times, she thinks it is ok to communicate with the world in guttural sounds. Usually this happens when she is trying to fill quiet periods. She doesn’t like quiet. So, I spend a lot of time telling her to use her words or not say anything at all. She usually chooses to do neither.

Don’t put that in your mouth!: I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep my kids from choking to death. They have no qualms about putting anything into their mouth. Caps. Rocks. Coins. Whole cupcakes. My wife once ate a dog turd – mistaking it for a tootsie roll – when she was a kid, so they clearly take after her.

     

You are fine.: My kids are as graceful as a hippopotamus on ice. They fall and start crying as often as one of those Real Housewives tries to attack a co-star. What is a daddy to do? I’m not raising any wimps. “You are fine.”

It will work until a bone is broken.

That is NOT how we act!: This almost exclusively applies to Sydney. With Tyson, I just say “no.” He is not old enough to understand the whole idea behind good and bad behavior. Sydney is. But understanding and obeying are two different things. No, it is not appropriate to color in daddy’s books. Or on the walls. No, you can’t soak the dog with that water gun. No, I would rather you didn’t scream and cry and throw a kicking tantrum while we are shopping at Krogers. Or while we are walking from the car to the house and our neighbors are all out in their yards doing nice, civil family things.

Did you wipe?: Self-explanatory.

Stay away from the edge of the pool!: I know this is a first-world problem, but I swear kids have no sense of how close death is. It is always right around the corner, people! Neither of my kids can swim. That doesn’t keep them from dancing around the edge like Rumer Willis.

They also will do this with two 100-pound dogs frolicking in their direction, dogs whom I happen to know would have no issue knocking a toddler into the water if said toddler were between them and 1) any morsel of food, 2) a nice pat on the head from their owner, 3) any critter that dared enter our back yard or 4) an ominous leaf floating in the pool that is no doubt a threat to said 100-pound dogs.

Don’t interrupt when I am talking to other adults.: Sydney commands attention 24-7. If you have a friend over and feel like having a normal conversation – well, that is the best time for her to start asking a million questions. “Dad, do snakes bite?” “Dad, why does Siri talk funny when she answers our questions?” “Dad, what Palace Pet would you want to be?”

She asks even if she knows the answers. “Dad, what color is your black shirt?”

Don’t interrupt when I am on the phone.:  She desperately wants you to understand that what she has to say is the most important thing in the world. If this means singing a made-up, gibberish song at the top of her voice while you are on the phone for work, well, so be it.

Don’t be so loud!: Outside of “no,” by far the most used in our house. I’m a loud talker and so is my wife, so this should not be a surprise. Sydney speaks at the same decibel level as a 12-gauge shotgun blast. It is annoying in the house. It is worse in public: “Dad, I need a wipe!”

That’s the current list. I am sure I will have to add a few dozen to this list by the time they are teens. It won’t make me popular. But it might just get them into adulthood.

Defiant behavior: Extinguish or Encourage?

I don’t know what I was like as a toddler, but I am pretty sure I was an a-hole for my mom to raise once I hit my teen years.

I not only thought I was the smartest kid on the block, I assumed I was smarter than most adults in my life. I had the confidence to consider myself the captain of my own destiny and in need of no one’s help to get where I wanted to go.

Those are admirable qualities. Unless you are a parent trying to keep a teenager in check.

My ultimate weapon, when all the arguing was done, was silence. I would go days without saying a word to mom. It wasn’t worth my time.

Like I said, a complete a-hole.

I bring this up now because Sydney is driving me crazy. And the other day, my mom said to me, “She reminds me a lot of what you were like when you were a kid.”

Thanks, mom. Now, not only do I not know how to stop the behavior that drives me crazy, I’m not even sure I want to. 

I only have experience raising two children. I can tell you raising Tyson is 100 percent easier than my daughter. And I think a lot of that has to do with personality. Tyson's is much more like my wife's and Sydney's is much more like mine.

Tyson is laid back.Up until the past few months, he rarely even got angry. He’s two now, so we are dealing with a few temper tantrums every now and then, but they pass quickly.

Sydney is a…challenging child. Her initial answer to anything you try to tell her to do is an emphatic “no.” Tyson pretty much does what you tell him. Sydney pretty much wants to know why you want her to do something and she’ll make you tell her seven different times and threaten punishment before she does it.

Everything is a fight. Bed time? Tyson might let out a little statement of protest or cry a little, but he’ll march right in there. With Sydney, it is a two-hour argument. Daddy, one more book please! Daddy, are dinosaurs extinct? What about turtles? Daddy, let me give you 30 reasons why I should not go to bed right now. 

Every…single… night. Ugh.

Tyson would fit right in as a Marine or soldier. He is a selfless team player who does what he is told, trusting it is for the greater good. Sydney is the high school student who gets expelled from school for defying  authority and running a school newspaper story critical of the principal because she thinks it is the right thing to do.

    

Tyson might become the victim of a bully. Sydney would punch out that bully…and then bully her brother herself.

Tyson will share his jelly beans with his sister. Sydney will accept the ones he shares, and then take the rest when he isn't looking. 

Tyson is content and can play by himself for hours. Sydney commands the attention of everyone in the room 24-7.  

She is exhausting. She is bull headed. She is feisty. She is selfish. She is a prima donna. She is…like her daddy.

There, I admitted it.

Is that something I want to change? For all the negatives, there is no way I am where I am in life without developing extreme confidence and independence at a young age and riding that attitude straight into adulthood. I came from a poor family in a small steel town; anything I wanted in life I had to take.

Those same traits that drive me crazy in her toddler years will send me to an early grave during her teen years. But those traits will also ensure she never becomes a battered woman or settles for anything less than the best in her mate. They’ll help her knock down glass ceilings she faces in the workplace and deal with workplace bullies who think they can boss her around. They’ll allow her to cope when friends abandon her, enemies come after her or life throws her curveballs of misery.

I heard on the radio recently that therapists like to say life is a pattern. The same things you do as a kid, the same mistakes you make as a teen or young adult – those types of things will repeat themselves throughout your life. We can’t really get away from our real selves.

I know there are things I wish I had done differently. I’m sure I’ve made doozies when it comes to mistakes. But overall, I’m pretty happy with where I am in life. I’d absolutely wish that for my daughter.

Don’t get me wrong. She needs and will learn to be humble and unselfish. But that inner drive she has, that little thing inside her head that tells her to question this or stand up for herself on that, that confidence that forces her to say no even when her head is telling her daddy is on his last nerve…I don’t think I want to extinguish that.

But those teen years are going to be painful.

"I Want More Balls"

Tyson is finally calling me “dad” with some regularity.

He’s said it once or twice before, but over the past month he has really started to talk and that is one of the words in his burgeoning vocabulary.

                                                                    Tyson at a recent hospital check up. He said "fish"
                                                          about a dozen times while looking at this aquarium-like contraption.

This has been a long time coming with him. I only have Sydney to compare him to, but the two have definitely had different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to development. Interestingly, they seem to fall along traditional gender lines.

She was quick with talking and intellectual-type things, while she was slow with walking and other gross motor skills. Tyson was the exact opposite. Even in what they choose to focus on, they seem cornered in tradition: Sydney knew her ABC’s at a young age, while Tyson was counting before he really started speaking.

His words are still not very clear. He actually sounds a little like Marlee Matlin. But hey, he’s talking. We will still likely get him in some sort of speech therapy, but a month ago I was absolutely sure he needed intense work with an expert. Now, I think maybe just a little help will do.

He has a sister who talks more than a wife on a Real Housewives show. I am convinced her chatterbox nature has kept her brother from talking. He can’t get a word in edgewise.

The other day, he said his first complete sentence.

“I want more balls.”

Now that could lead you to some pretty interesting interpretations. I’ll save you the headache: he was talking about cheeseballs – those neon orange things that somehow pass for food.

My wife and I used to have an agreement that we wouldn’t feed our kids junk food, but somewhere in the past year or so, my wife fell off that wagon and, since I am only a secondary parent when it comes to feeding, I have no say in the matter.  Her explanation is that he is tiny, she is worried about his growth and she is going to get food in him any way she can.

At least it has given me a good joke for years to come:  “Hey, my kid took forever to talk and when he finally did, he looked at me and said ‘I want more balls.’  ”

OK, maybe not so funny.

But I love when he calls me dad.