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.   

Sydney and Kanye: Two Peas in a Pod?

If it is sacrilegious to admit your children annoy you, then let the shouts of “Satan!” come my way.

I love my daughter more than anything on earth, but this new “Terrible Twos” phase she is apparently hitting early is putting her just a notch below Kanye West on the annoyance meter.

Here are a few things Sydney has taken to doing that I am certain are designed to entice me into child abuse and get me sent away so she can spend her days eating nothing but cupcakes:

Spitting out her food. Somehow, she has come to believe that if she is eating something and decides – mid-chew, mind you -- she doesn’t want it, she can simply spit it out. This could be in her high chair, or while she walks around the house.

This is obviously unacceptable. And I have told her so. Loudly. Over and over.

The other day she took a couple bites of an apple, slowly opened her mouth and nonchalantly let the contents drop to the floor.

My wife’s response to this was, “Well, you know, she doesn’t like the skin.”

“Oh, OK, I guess we’ll let her turn our living room into an apple orchard because she doesn’t like the skin. She doesn’t like being confined to our yard either, so maybe we should let her take her toys to the middle of the street and play.”

Chirp. Chirp.

That’s the sounds of crickets. Sarcasm doesn’t go over well in my house when the wife is the target.

Believe me, I am going to break Sydney of this habit or I will end up in the graveyard of failed parents, alongside Dina and Michael Lohan and whomever parented Amanda Bynes. Throw in those teen moms from MTV, too. We’ll have a hell of a party.  

The only saving grace on this one is we have dogs that follow her around and scoop up her remnants shortly after they hit the floor. They stalk her as a tiger does its prey. I think sometimes she does it just to see the dogs eat it.

Is my child the only one who does this?

Throwing her plate of food on the floor. For a while, we had her “trained” to say “all done” when she felt she had eaten enough. She’d often say this with great exuberance, “All Done!” and that was our cue to immediately clear her plate and get her out of the chair.

Now, she seems to have eschewed our agreed-upon signal for the distressing act of dumping her food on the floor. Where does one learn this? If you know me and my rather large physique, you know very little food ever gets dumped off my plate, so this cannot be something she is learning at home.

Again, thank God for the dogs. I never have to worry about carpet stains because they are on those stray morsels faster than Kim Kardashian scurrying to her next red carpet interview.

Nevertheless, this brazen act is similar to spitting out her food and does not go unpunished.

But I am just not sure a 22-month-old mind yet comprehends the whole concept of “right and wrong.” I’ll keep trying, because, at some point, either she’ll get it or my heart will explode in frustration and I’ll fade blissfully from this earth to a place where all children happily eat all the food on their plates – including their vegetables -- carry them to the sink on their own and hand wash them to spotlessness.

Totally ignoring me. The other day, I asked Sydney 15 times to look at me so I could show her something. She was playing no further than five feet away. Somehow, she managed to keep her back turned through all 15 pleadings.

This is a remarkable skill, when you think about it. This single-mindedness and ability to block out the world around you might lead to great things. I imagine this is how Stephen Hawking is when he is working on some serious physicist stuff.

It is also a growing trend. She regularly has a very nonchalant attitude when it comes to taking directions from others. Perhaps she is practicing for her teen years.

I can’t wait for those golden years when she essentially serves as dad’s gopher, fetching a newspaper or beer, or picking up things his 50-year-old body refuses to bend for. I still remember when I was about 8 and playing outside with my friends, hearing my dad call “Brian!” several times and running inside to see what he needed.

“Can you change the channel for me?” he asked. (This was before the days of remote control.)

Ahh, the rites of fatherhood. When do I get there with Sydney?

Until then, I’ll continue to repeat simple commands like, “It is time for bed, let’s go upstairs” and she’ll continue to stack her Legos, like daddy’s voice is a dog whistle her ears are not attuned to.

So those are my top three complaints as of now. It is important to note that this is a fluid process, and as we conquer one annoying habit, another soon pops up. If you ask me six months from now, this list will be different and, perhaps, quite longer.

Now, I could also do a post on all of the things that I adore about my daughter, from her recitation of the ABCs in order to get everyone to clap for her; to her getting excited and shouting a 25-word diatribe, of which only about five are actual words you can understand; to the ultimate daddy-loving symbol of affection, the “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” I get when she runs into my arms upon my arrival from work.

But that would bore you. Or seem like bragging. Or paint me as a nice guy.

Call me a guy who likes to go against the grain. Even if it is sacrilegious to the shrine of parenting.

Who is Tim Tebow?

I don’t know who Kim Kardashian is dating, whether Alec Baldwin has torn someone a new one lately or if Charlie Sheen is still WINNING.

I don’t know if the Miami Heat are on track to give Lebron his first championship (I hope not), whether the Massillon Tigers will be a playoff contender next high school football season (I hope so) or if Tim Tebow has ever had premarital sex (With the ladies he can pull, if he has not, he is indeed God on earth).

I am a parent of a 4-month-old. I know spit up, Enfamil and onesies. I know 4 a.m. wake ups, jumperoos and binkies.

I am daddy. Hear me roar.

My nights used to be leisurely. Stroll home about 6 p.m., kiss the wife, have some dinner, spend a couple of hours surfing the Web for interesting tidbits, watch a little television, hit the sack. I don’t even want to tell you what my life was like when I was just a single dude in a loose mood. Let’s just say doing what you want, when you want, never gets old.

Now, I hustle home as fast as I can to relieve my beleaguered wife, wolf down dinner during my daughter’s evening nap and spend the rest of the night alternating between the jumperoo, the activity floor mat and making funny noises to keep my daughter entertained.

Time for fun? I am the master of playing Words with Friends in one hand while feeding my daughter a bottle with the other.

(Speaking of Words with Friends, how about some of the losers on there? I am a former newspaper writer. I have a better vocabulary than 80 percent of the people I know. But somehow I end up playing people who can play a dozen words I have never heard uttered. The other day, a guy plays "ohed" and "hm" on me. Seriously? You are either cheating or a competitive Scrabble player who should be ashamed of yourself for stooping to play Words with Friends.)

Back to my new life. I haven’t read Deadspin.com in four months. Great site for crazy sports stories. They broke the story about Brett Favre texting a picture of his schlong to a co-worker while with the New York Jets. Who the hell does this stuff? Listen guys, if at any time you feel the need to take a picture of your schlong and text it, you are 1) really, really confident and 2) a COMPLETE IDIOT.

Anyway, I never read deadspin without laughing. I love to laugh. Yet, I have not visited the site since about September. I love to keep up on happenings in the journalism world, but I rarely visit Poynter’s media gossip site anymore and I haven’t even seen Jim Romenesko’s new site.

ESPN.com? Yes, still a daily must. But reading my hometown newspaper, the Massillon Independent, has gone by the wayside. I no longer know when some of my high school classmates get divorced, foreclosed on or busted for drug possession or drunk driving, depriving me of my right to feel superior to all those kids who thought they were cooler than me 30 years ago.

I do read the Cincinnati Enquirer still, but that is because it is a must for my job and I can get away with reading online at work. But I don’t have time to read my buddy Paul’s blog and see if his kids are still scoring soccer goals with Pele-like precision.

I do catch a little news every now and then. I know Rick Santorum is bat-shit conservative, Newt Gingrich is full of bull-shit for thinking African Americans make up the majority of people on food stamps, and that the working man is going ape-shit over Mitt Romney’s 15-percent tax rate.

I also know some chicken-shit Italian cruise captain abandoned ship early.

But now I get my info from the first 20 minutes of the Today Show while stuffing a morning bottle in my daughter’s mouth. No in-depth analysis for me. I haven’t studied enough to vote for American Idol, let alone a Republican presidential candidate.

What else am I not doing enough of?

Going for drinks with friends. People stare at you funny when you bring a baby to a bar.

Cleaning my house. When I have a few precious seconds of down time, I refuse to spend it with a vacuum in my hand. If Children’s Services wants to take my kid away for a dirty house, they’ll have to fight through a mountain of dirty clothes and dishes to get to her.

Making love to my wife. I’m 45 years old. I have a choice between five hours of sleep a night or four hours and fifty minutes. That extra ten minutes of sleep means a lot.

The understatement of the day would be to say my life is different. Even with my wife doing the bulk of the work, parenting is time-consuming. You don’t ever want to start anything new because you never know when you are going to hear the words, “How about Daddy takes over and plays with you for awhile?”

You don’t ever want to get too engrossed in a television show, because the next thing you know she is plopping off the couch and landing on her head.

You don’t ever want to use BOTH hands to play Words with Friends because the second that bottle drops from her lips, the blood-curdling screams start.

You get the picture. 

The other day I worked on staff evaluations all day on a Sunday. Talk about feeling guilty. My wife looked like Nick Nolte’s mug shot by the time I got home.

This parenting thing is a sacrifice. I accept it. I love my daughter. For the next few years, I am prepared to miss Kim Kardashian’s next marriage, Lebron James next failure and Lady Gaga’s next Madonna rip off.

But please, if Tim Tebow finally does get laid, somebody email me a picture of the chick.

Diapers Have Fronts and Backs?

My first night alone with Sydney ended with my wife arriving home to find two dirty diapers on the coffee table and her daughter dressed in only her diaper and half an onesie.

But at least Sydney was alive. I’m pretty certain Brooke was concerned that might not be the case.

She attended a wedding on her own. It was not that we couldn’t find a babysitter.  I wasn’t invited. One of her friends tried to be conservative with the guest list in order to control costs and I did not make the cut.

A lesser man would be offended by this. But you have to realize, inherently, I am a lazy person. If given the choice between dressing up, sitting through a long church service, talking to people I do not know and dancing to Celine Dion or lying on the couch watching ESPN in shorts and a t-shirt, I think you know what will get my check mark every time.

So I became the babysitter. Although when it is your kid, you really can’t call it babysitting. In fact, it is a little insulting to dads. Nobody ever says a mom is babysitting. We dads are considered a bit incompetent when it comes to caring for our own children, so we are placed on the same level as babysitters.

A lesser man would be offended by this.

The night started uneventful, with Sydney sleeping for a couple of hours. But then it was feeding time.  Brooke had pumped ahead of time, so I was ready. I’ve been doing a few feedings here and there for weeks, so this part of the night went smoothly.

But then, a bit of trouble. I checked her diaper and there was some nastiness down there. Up until this point, Brooke had been the primary diaper changer in our house. She doesn’t have a lot of patience for fools, and if she sees I am not so good at something, she just takes it on herself. Why teach a man to fish? My diaper duty pretty much ended the day I put one on backwards. I did not even know there were fronts and backs to diapers!

Now, alone by myself, the pressure was on. I managed to put this one on frontwards, but when I went to tape the sides together, I pulled the tape right off the diaper. Strike one. I grabbed a second diaper, lined it up right, gently pulled the tape and managed to get everything right. Except, when I lifted her up, it sagged deeply.  Not tight enough. Oh well, why waste another diaper? Let’s roll with it.

About an hour later, that became a big mistake. I heard a rumbling that turned into an explosion. I scrambled to contain it, hugging the sides tight to her body so nothing spilled out. I actually did ok. But I made sure the next diaper fit her like a Kim Kardashian sweater. Tight.   

My wife is deeply involved in my daughter’s bowel movements. The doctors tell us this is a way to ensure the baby is eating right…count the bowel movements. Take a look at them to see the texture and color. No thanks, doc. Sounds like a job for the wife. So, to assist Brooke with her mission, I left both diapers open, sitting on the coffee table. The only one happy with this was the dogs, who got to sniff a new smell for the rest of the night.

Meanwhile, in between two diaper changes, I had to take on and off her clothes. Most days, Sydney doesn’t even leave the house. Why does she even need clothes? Sydney doesn’t like socks. She kicks them off. She doesn’t like pants either. Well, her dad doesn’t. He doesn’t have the patience to put them on and take them off. Her legs are always getting caught up in them, especially those pajamas with footies in them. So, I made an executive decision and the socks and pants were ditched. Then, I unbuttoned the onesie at the bottom and pushed it above her waist to give me easier access to check the diapers. She essentially sat around in a diaper and a t-shirt the rest of the night. This would not make my wife happy. But who cares? She was sipping wine, eating wedding cake and dancing to Celine Dion.  

By the way, my wife called twice in six hours to check on me. Like I said, there’s not a lot of faith there. A lesser man would be offended. One of her calls came while Sydney was in the middle of what would be a two-hour crying jag. I practically hung up on her. I’m sure that inspired confidence, but I was a little stressed. No time for niceties.

In fact, that crying jag was the worst part of the night. My solution to these things is to move Sydney from position to position until she is comfortable and quits crying. I’ll hold her like a football, put her over my shoulder, cradle her, set her down flat, prop her up….anything to get the crying to stop. Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to find a comfortable position that night. She basically cried until she ALMOST fell asleep.

Oh, yes….sleep. My job was to keep her up until her late-night feeding, at about 11 p.m. We’ve discovered she sleeps better at night if we keep her up from her dinner feeding until her late-night feeding. This is not as easy as it sounds. You could stand four feet apart and throw her back and forth like a basketball and she could sleep through it. I have even used an ice cube to help keep her awake. It only works half the time. When a baby is tired, a baby sleeps.

So, keeping her awake was one of my jobs that night. Mission accomplished…thanks to my singing, my making her dance and my doing many other things that annoyed her enough to keep her crying because I wouldn't let her sleep.

So Brooke came home to find that her baby was not only alive, but awake. As ordered. Did I get a thank you? Heck no. She was more concerned with the dirty diapers on the coffee table and the lack of clothing on our daughter.

A lesser man would have been offended.