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.

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.       

Congenital Heart Defect Week: Tyson's Story

I wish I knew a lot less about congenital heart defects than I do.

For example: Congenital heart defects are the number one cause of birth defect-related deaths, and the leading cause of ALL infant deaths in the United States.

My son is one of the lucky ones. He’s a survivor. And it only took one open-heart surgery -- so far; he’s facing the potential of another this summer -- to set him on the path to good health.



Tyson at one of his many doctor visits. He can even giggle about them these days.

 

We know it could have been worse. When he was diagnosed, we read the heartbreaking stories of survival rates, painful surgeries and, in some cases, parents being faced with the ultimate loss. 
 
And we personally know families that have gone through much more traumatic experiences: Here’s the story of a fellow teacher in Brooke’s district. Please take the time to read it.

To say life isn’t fair is an understatement. No 7-month-old should have to go through that. No family should have to go through that.
 

This is Congenital Heart Defect week. I’m not going to preach to you. If you don't know Tyson's story, you can read it in my previous blog posts. I’m not one to really buy into these “awareness” events. 

But once you’ve been through something, you feel an allegiance to it. So this is my contribution to the effort. If it causes you to think a little more about families in this situation, or to make a small donation to the research that helps "heart babies," I’ll consider my job done.
 

My son is a daily walking reminder of congenital heart defects. This week, we’ll put him in his heart-embroidered,“Chicks Dig Scars” shirt and hope someone asks what that is all about.

We have a story to tell and this is a good week to tell it.
 

It will start with the words, “Well, we are really lucky…”

The Secret to Enjoying Your Cheese Coneys with Kids in Tow

After doing this for three years and two kids now, I think there is one area where I have parenting down pat:

The dreaded dinner out.

No, I don’t have the perfect make up for the either sorrowful or angry stares you receive when your 3-year-old daughter melts down because just the tiniest sliver of ketchup touched her cottage cheese or when your 18-month-old son throws a fit because he wants to hold his own cup and doesn’t like your parental attempts to save the restaurant from flooding.

But I am a fast eater. I mean really fast. And if there is anything I have learned as a parent of toddlers, it is that you have a very short window when eating out. You basically need to plan your get-away while being seated and ask for the check as soon as your food reaches the table. Otherwise, you are playing with fire. And I mean fire of the worst kind: a complete melt-down-by-a-3-year-old fire.

I used to be one of those single guys who ate out by himself, quietly reading the paper in between trips to the buffet bar. I hated when my Frisch’s fish sandwich was interrupted by the temper tantrum of a 2-year-old. I looked on in disdain at the parents who couldn’t keep their kids under control in a public place.

No more.

I now know that there is no controlling the emotions of a toddler. The littlest things set them off and getting them back on course is more difficult than moving Disneyland to Ohio.

Threaten to take them to the car? Three things are going to happen. First, they are going to escalate and get louder at the thought of losing the privilege of eating out. So your situation actually worsens. Two, all eyes will be on you when you carry a kicking and screaming toddler from the restaurant. Embarrassing. Three, you are going to miss your dinner.

Those who know me know I don't like missing dinner.

Threaten punishment at home? As “soon as we get out of here, I’m going to…” Good luck. They will have long forgotten the incident and punishment will be a moot point. You can’t learn if you don’t remember why you are being punished. Children have the attention span of a gnat.

The best thing you can do is prevention. Get out of there before a melt-down happens.

I am one of the fastest eaters you will ever meet. When I was a kid, we were poor. Hot dogs were a regular meal. Hot dogs come in packs of eight. There were five members of our family. I can guarantee my dad was getting a second dog. The other two were up for grabs to the fastest eaters.

I learned young.

So when it comes to restaurants, my wife and I have a game plan. We sit down and immediately ask for the kids’ food. That gets delivered first and we hope it holds their attention. When our food comes, we immediately ask for the check. We sometimes have to explain our “short window” to the server, but most of the time they get it. They either have their own kids, or they are thankful we are willing to get out of there before the floor under our table is covered with Splenda packets.

Then I do my thing. I eat like Hannibal Lector at the county morgue. My fork flies fast and furious. Just about the time the kids are starting to get antsy, I am cleaning the last bit of Skyline chili off my plate.

Then, it is wait-and-see time.

If we all get to stay at the table until the wife is finished, that is a bonus. We just enjoyed a nice family dinner. But if one of the kids is on the verge of a Tasmanian Devil impersonation, I am free to swoop them up and run for the car as fast as possible, leaving my lovely bride – and our fellow diners -- the luxury of a peaceful meal.

Voilà! There you have the Gregg secret to eating out.

Parents-to-be, take heed. Start practicing now. Study the menu for the shortest cooking times. Learn what goes down smoothly and what will take time to eat. (This is no time for crab legs, for Heaven’s sake!) Know what restaurants have the best items of distraction, or bring them with you. (We have even been known to bring the iPad.)

You heard it here first. Bon Appétit!  

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.