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.   

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.

Lots of What to Dos? as a Parent

                                                               Henrietta the Hedgehog


Sometimes, I need the help of a child psychologist.

Luckily, I have one working for me. She’s an intern who took the job because she needed the job, not because it is going to be some prerequisite to a PR or marketing career.  We hired her because she blew us away in the interview process and she hasn’t disappointed since.

So in addition to having someone to do our crappy jobs here at work, I have access to someone who is studying the behavior of children and can be of help with advice on raising two toddlers. As most of you know, my answer to everything is to Google it. But some questions go beyond “How do I take a splinter out? or “What are these red splotchy things behind my son’s ears?”  and require a professional opinion.

And boy, do I have questions. For example, do I tell my daughter her artwork sucks, or do I pretend like she is the best at everything she does?

Sydney has a recent fascination with drawing and painting. I’m not sure her artwork is good even for a 3 year old. But if I tell her she needs to work on it, that could be really discouraging. If I tell her it is fantastic, will she ever work to get better?

For now, I play it safe and say something along the lines of, “Wow, that is very interesting.”

And really, when you are talking about art, could you be wrong? There is a whole genre of art – abstract – that makes no sense at all. I could drink two cases of beer on a Saturday night and puke on a canvas and someone would probably pay me $100 for my incredible abstract work of art.

But it gets fishier with other things. Sydney took a tumbling class this year. She is as athletic as the Big Bang’s Sheldon Cooper. I practiced with her, but she just can’t seem to grasp even the simplest of tumbling exercises. Her bear crawl becomes a butt crawl. Her crab walk becomes an exercise in pushing her stomach across the floor. Her somersaults have you fearing for her life.

I’m convinced, at 3 years old, this child will never be an athlete. I want to be encouraging. I want her to keep trying.  But I feel like oohing and aahhing at everything she does and telling her how great she is might lead to self-perception problems when she gets older.

I’ve yet to ask Sara, the child psychologist, about that question, but I did ask her the other day what to do about a child who uses a stuffed animal as a security blanket.

Sydney’s hedgehog, Henrietta, must go everywhere she goes. She cannot go to sleep or to day care without Henrietta. It has gotten to the point that when we head to the grocery, Henrietta buckles in the cart.

This can be a massive problem if “Henri,” as she calls her, gets lost. It results in massive, uncontrollable sobbing, and resistance to doing anything in life until Henrietta is by her side. So, should she have to go to bed while Henri is missing, there is no going to bed. We have to search the house high and low while she loudly sobs to the point of heaving.

Our previous day care provider once drove Henri to our house at 9 p.m. because Sydney had left her there that day. When we said , “You don’t have to do that,” her reply was. “Oh yes I do, because I know from experience how miserable your night will be if she is not there.”

We lost Henri once while running errands. She is likely in a Hyde Park parking lot as we speak. My wife thought she would be clever and went to Ikea and bought seven identical hedgehogs. It worked! Brilliant move.

But not for long. After series of lost and founds, Sydney now realizes she has three hedgehogs. And she actually has a favorite – the one that feels the fluffiest. If you try to substitute one of the others, you get the sobbing. She actually knows the difference.

The other day, she dropped Sydney off at day care and by the time she had arrived at work five minutes later, she had a call waiting from her from the day care provider. Heni was gone! We didn’t know it at the time, but she was sitting on the floor of our garage, the victim of a careless child and a too-busy-in-the-morning daddy.

When Brooke tried to talk some sense into Sydney, she was met with sobbing to the point of almost throwing up. The girl was in a complete melt down and on the verge of physical collapse. Luckily,  Brooke keeps a brand new “fluffy” emergency Henri in the car for just such occasions and was able to drive the few blocks to the day care provider’s house and save the day before the opening bell rang at her school.

Now, you can imagine how this goes over with me. There is no way I am driving back to day care after getting to work because of a stuffed animal. When it is time to go to bed, I am not crawling under every couch and chair in the house looking for a hedgehog.

My solution is, if she loses it, she lives with it. She will cry for a couple of days – cry massively – but then we will be done with this. Of course, my wife thinks this is barbaric.

So I ask the child psychologist.

She is more on my wife’s side. Tell her that just like Sydney needs some alone time from her brother, Henri needs some alone time from Sydney. Or, tell her that she won’t be able to take Henri to pre-school with her and, since this is something Sydney is really looking forward to, she needs to practice being without Henri.

I guess these are the humane ways of doing things.

This is definitely not the way my learn-by-hard-knocks dad would have handled things, but he never had access to a child psychologist.

Or patience.  

Maybe I am getting soft in old age. Or my kids have melted my hardened heart. I’ll give these new-fangled approaches a try. I’ll show everyone I’m no Archie Bunker.

My kids will be happy, my wife will be happy, even Sara the intern will be happy.       

Melt Downs Here, There and Everywhere

Life with two toddlers can be interesting. You are always walking on eggshells, wondering what might set them off on a crying jag. They get upset at the smallest of things, but that small thing could result in you bolting from a restaurant and taking refuge in a car from the stares of a thousand fellow diners who wonder why you can’t control your child.

How do they make tears appear on demand? It is an unexplained phenomenon. How do they get so fired up about the smallest thing? They cry better than the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz. And how can they completely go insane over something as small as a sticker not sticking to their shirt?

I have two children who are as different as night and day. Tyson is mellow, laid back and a “good listener” when it comes to obeying mom and dad. Sydney is….well, she is going to read this some day, so let’s just say she is the, er, opposite.  The battles we are going to have during her teen-age years are going to be epic. If I don’t have a heart attack before then, it will most certainly come during one of her ginormous fits over not being allowed to stay out all night with her bad-boy boyfriend.

But they are two-of-a-kind when it comes to melt downs. On any given day, we have a couple of crying fits out of both of the children. Over the damndest things.

Here are the odd things that can make either one of my kids go into a crying fit:

Sydney

The radio not playing her favorite song.

A song on the radio sung by a man instead of a woman.

Me singing a song. (This brings others to tears, too….I just beat you to the joke you were thinking. Ha Ha.)

One of the dogs touching her as it walks by.

Any clothing item she is wearing, any part of her body, or any toy she is playing with getting even a single drop of water on it.

A sticker not sticking to her clothing. (She has even awakened in the middle of the night and cried long and hard to the point where I have to go in and settle her, all because the sticker she put on her pajamas before she went to bed is not there at 3 a.m.)

Going to bed.

Waking up.

Not getting to wear her Halloween costume anytime, anywhere, any day.

Her shoes being too tight. (Not too small, mind you. The same shoes she wore the day before and will wear the next day. Just on THIS day, they are too tight.)

The sun going down.

The moon not being visible at night.

Dinner time.

Her dad calling her Sydney Grace Gregg. (It is JUST SYDNEY dad!)

Tyson 

The dogs staring him down when he has a snack in his hand. (Not actually stealing the snack, but just looking like they might steal it.)

Anything other than Team Umizoomi being on the television.

The robot in Team Umizoomi swimming in an Olympic-style race. (No idea. But he can’t seem to watch this episode without cowering and crying.)

Not being allowed to push a desk chair around the house. (It might be a good workout for him, but we don’t need any scrapes on the wooden floor.)

Not getting to go to bed. (Unlike his sister, he likes to sleep. He is ready to go down about 8 p.m. and gets cranky if you delay.)

Sitting him in his bathtub seat rather than just letting him rough it alone in the tub.

Tearing his food into bite-sized pieces rather than letting him chow down on something that would necessitate me performing the Heimlich maneuver.

Not letting him eat the top of a crayon. (I’ve caught him with blue or green tongues more than I care to admit.)

That’s just a start. If I were to track the things that upset them to the point of anger/tears for the next six months, this list would be 1) as long as Kirstie Alley’s grocery list and 2) as crazy as a lunch date with Amanda Byne and Lindsay Lohan.

Yes, Syndey’s list is much longer. That is either because she is a girl, because she is older or because she is a drama queen. You make the call.

I can laugh now. But when we are going through these little mini-fits, laughter is the furthest thing from my mind.

Destined for The Big Bang Theory or Monday Night Football?

Sydney is not quite 3. She is smart as a whip, has an incredible vocabulary for her age, is extremely klutzy and a “girly” girl to the Nth-degree.

Tyson is 15 months old. He is rambunctious, says only a few words, seems uninterested in learning and can climb a set of stairs faster than I can walk them.

Can you predict your kid’s future in the first couple years of life? Will these traits follow them into their teens? Is Sydney destined to be a bookworm and the last kid picked in gym class? Will Tyson be the star athlete who can’t score enough on his SATs to play in college?

I’m asking. Please weigh in, veteran parents.

I realized that what I have just described is stereotypical of boys and girls. But this has to be more than that, doesn't it?

  

                                                     Princess Sydney
 
Sydney can carry on a conversation like an adult. In fact, she talks TOO much. She is sometimes like Robin Williams on crack. Or Robin Williams when he wasn’t on crack.

She loves to have a book read to her. She has a great memory. She puts things together quickly. After two readings of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she started to call her oatmeal “porridge.”

It has always been like this. She could say a couple dozen words at a year old and she knew her ABCs and how to count to 20 by 18 months.

I don’t know how she compares to most kids. I do know of the few we regularly encounter, she seems ahead of them intellectually.

She’s also a grade-A, Jerry Lewis-like klutz. She falls a lot, runs funny, can’t even position her hands right to catch a ball and will fail to find something that is six inches from her feet, despite detailed directions.

She appears to have zero athletic ability. She’d fit right in with the gang from The Big Bang Theory.

We face a big decision with her – her birthday is Aug. 30. She turns 3 this year, but in a couple more it will be 5. I have no doubt she will intellectually be ready for kindergarten. But will she be physically?

She will be the youngest and probably the smallest – she is petite – in her class. I worry not about kindergarten, but later years. Will she be the last person picked on the playground? Will she have trouble standing up to bullies? Will she be a terrible athlete who could benefit from being older than her classmates as opposed to younger?

She also is as girly-girl as you can get. She wants her toenails painted and she wants to wear princess dresses. She would definitely be Blair Warner and not Jo Polniaczek if she lived in Mrs. Garrett’s house and was learning the facts of life.

                                                      Preparing to destroy a bag of blocks

Meanwhile, Tyson is the opposite. The kid doesn’t say many words -- in fact, he prefers to communicate in grunts -- has little interest in being read to and seems to shun all intellectual endeavors.

But does he like to motor. Never wants to sit still. He’s a Tazmanian Devil.

He's the reason baby gates were invented. He wants to climb every step he sees and do it in record fashion. He literally laughs as he crawls up.

The other day, he started wrestling his older, and much bigger, sister, tackling her to the ground and climbing on top of her. The kid just learned to walk and he’s already tackling people like he is in the WWE.

He’s fearless. It is not unusual for us to find a big red knot or welt on his head or face and have no idea how it got there. I’ve even considered calling child welfare on the wife, but then we’ll see him run into a wall or chair or something and it becomes evident how they made their way to his noggin.

When I read to him, he grabs the book out of my hand and turns the pages himself, throws it on the ground or tries to tear the pages apart. He has as much interest in books as Snooki.

So, is this them? Do kids maintain the same traits they show in the first couple years throughout their lives?

More importantly: is there something I can do to head these things off?  I want both of my kids to be well-rounded. What can I do to ensure that?

Is this a nature vs. nurture debate?  I’m not sure.

Weigh in veteran parents. Tell me how your children changed or remained the same from when they were toddlers. I’m interested.