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I’m certain this toy car was purchased for our sons with the best of intentions, but this may be video of its final road trip. A toy that brings the car alarm experience right into your own living room should never have been invented. Perhaps we can incorporate it as a new method of interrogation instead. One straight hour of this and you’re ready to negotiate. Certain to be deemed unreasonable torture.
So Dads, if you have something more horrible than this little gem, be sure to share a video of your pain in the comments section. If you succeed in convincing me, I’ll send along the world’s second most annoying toy to add to your collection!
One of the best skills a man can learn is how to deliver a good joke. For some it comes naturally, for sure, but it can be taught too. When I went through police academy oh so many years ago, the instructors randomly called cadets in front of the class to deliver a joke. At first we weren’t sure why they were torturing us like that. With all the stress academy throws at you, this is what some cadets were most nervous about. The instructors’ point was to teach us to control our nervousness and show confidence in a group setting. It was a point I never forgot. You can get away with some obvious nerves during a lecture or speech and still deliver the message. But that same discomfort will make a joke fall flatter than an opossum at a steamroller parade.
Jokes serve purpose in men’s lives. It is an art almost exclusively reserved for us. Social psychologist Dr. Herbert Strean believes the jokes we share reflect who we are as people. In his book Jokes: Their Meaning and Purpose, Strean states that the jokes we choose to tell relate to areas and aspects of life that many of us find challenging. Taking a humorous view towards the things we find awkward in life can be healthy. So as fathers, while mothers tend to congregate innately at the playground perimeter, men often need something like a joke to ease into a conversation. A joke that points out our shared challenges as parents can help build the interactions we need as men. Here’s a good example from Jokes.com:
A seven-year-old tells his four-year-old brother that they should start swearing. “When we go downstairs for breakfast, I’ll say ‘hell’ and you say ‘ass.’” The four-year-old happily agrees.
At breakfast, the seven-year-old says, “Aw hell, Mom, I’ll just have some toast.”
The surprised mother quickly smacks him. The boy runs upstairs crying. The mother turns to the younger boy, “And what would YOU like for breakfast?”
“I don’t know,” the four-year-old blubbers, “but you can bet your ass it’s not gonna be toast!”
Tips for Good Joke Telling:
Tell it in a tone that sounds like it is from your personal life. Find a joke that feels like a story to you.
Consider a written joke only as an outline. Add your own mannerisms and speech to make it fit.
Remember that joke-telling is a skill and will get better with practice.
Animate it. When you describe something foul, let your face show it. Use your hands arms and legs to gesture. This will help kick in your audience’s imagination.
Know your audience. Steer clear of jokes you know will be offensive.
Feel free to exaggerate. Make it bigger than life.
When you think of clothing for dads, what do you think of? A “#1 Dad” t-shirt? A new three-pack of tighty whiteys to stuff into the top dresser drawer? Let me tell you what we want most of all. Clothing that serves a greater purpose than mere warmth. So maybe we didn’t come built with food-producing breasts and counterbalanced hips. What we lack in physiology we can make up for with GEAR.
JJ Cole Logic Diaper Bag
Sure there are plenty of diaper bags with skull and crossbones or camouflage designs out there. But only this sling-style diaper bag makes you look like you mean business. Flung over the shoulder, it becomes a tactical holster ready for action. Hurl diapers like grenades. Wet wipe? Bam! It also doubles as a double-wide hip sack for a less menacing appearance. Multiple compartments allow for easy storage of diapers, bottles and small toys.
Ex Officio Amphi Convertible Pants
Not just fashionable, now utilitarian! Cargo pants are the staple of the Dad uniform. It’s all about the pockets. They come in shorts or pant length, but why not the best of both worlds? These pants zip into shorts any time you like. The fabric is quick drying and, with Teflon for stain resistance, practically indestructable. The built-in briefs means hop in and bug out.
DadsGear Diaper Vest
Be the inspector gadget of the playground. This is the ultra undercover diaper bag. A changing pad you say? Reach behind your back and Voilà!. Pull diapers from pockets once reserved for stashing beer on the ski slopes. These stylin’ fleece vests come in a variety of colors and conceal anything you need to feed, clean and entertain your child.
Yesterday I was approached by an older couple concerned for the safety of my son. He had climbed on a picnic table while I was drawing in the sand with my other boy. I watched the whole thing and thought little of it. Three feet off the ground, sand underneath. The couple sat on a nearby bench. He crawled on top and scooted off the edge, turning around just like I taught him. When I walked back to the table the woman on the bench said, “You can’t let him do that! We thought he was going to fall.” Really?
Still, I didn’t dismiss it. It reminded me of the other looks around the playground. Mothers often keep the corner of their eye on my boys when they swing from the gym bars. On occasion I’ve seen a mother step toward them when they climb something that they aren’t comfortable letting their own child climb. I understand their fears. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of pediatric mortality,causing more deaths in children ages 1–4 years than thenext 10 leading causes of death combined (National Safety Council, 2001). But I feel I know exactly what my boys are capable of doing. It made me wonder, are fathers hazardous to their children’s health?
There is definitely a different philosophy in place between my wife and I. If Kathy were to describe the qualities she would like to nurture in the boys I suspect her keywords would be “respectful”, “loving” and “sweet.” Certainly important qualities, but I believe my top choices would be to impart independence, confidence and awareness of their capabilities. There is research to back up this parental difference. In studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers found mothers and fathers interact with young children in different ways during their time together. “While mothers tend to adopt nurturing roles, fathers play with theirtoddlers in more physically interactive ways.” (Lamb, 1997; Lewis,1997). Their belief was that because paternal playtime may be more physically engaged than the style of maternal nurturing, fathers may be responsible for more unintentional injury.
I suppose it is an acceptable theory. Keeping a child safe is stereotypically tied to nurturing maternal qualities. Researchers Schwebel and Brezauzek conducted two studies on the matter. Their tests were devised to quantify if this difference in parenting gender made a child more prone to injury. Their first study was with parents of children ages six months to three years. What they discovered was the gender of parents played no part in the rate of childhood injuries. They found that both parent genders recognize and teach risk avoidance to the child. Instead, they found that the amount of time that either parent was away from the home contributed to the occurrence of injuries. The perceived gains to the family by a parent working longer hours was what caused a greater possibility of injury to the child.
In a later study Schwebel and Brezauzek conducted similar research with children between five to ten years old. They found that fathers who reported more positiverelationships with their children had children protected from injury. This was particularly true of father–son relationships, which is good for me.(David C Schwebel, PhD and Carl M Brezausek, MS; Department of Psychology, and Center for Educational Accountability, University of Alabama at Birmingham.)
So while we may often have a more physical style of parenting, fret not fathers of the world. We have the intuition we need to teach our children appropriate risks and keep them safe. Will we convince the other side with this argument? Probably not. The maternal reaction to risk seems built-in. Just be confident that our guidance, just like their mother’s, is necessary to balance the full spectrum of qualities we want to see in our children to keep them safe.
So as we say on the playground, “Swing high boys, and hold on tight!”
One of the toughest adjustments for me as a stay-at-home dad was coming up with an exercise schedule that fit into the day. I’m big on showing our boys how to stay healthy. We are the example they will follow. I also feel that staying in shape makes us better, more capable parents.
It seems simple in theory. But the unpredictability of a toddler schedule can turn the logistics into anything but simple. I picked my window, after the morning snack and before lunch. It gave me about two hours. I’m a jogger, which seemed the simplest exercise to continue. A pair of shoes and a running stroller and you’re out the door. Almost.
About fifteen minutes after the morning snack a spontaneous biological occurrence may slow down the whole operation. My choice was to change diapers on the side of the road or wait and deal with the consequences at home. I once thought I could predict their “movements” by food type and quantity but I was wrong one too many times. So I decided to wait it out. Fifteen minutes, then the time to deal with any snack related consequences. Maybe a half hour total. No worries, it still leaves me over an hour to run.
But wait. The water cups. Shoot. Oh, and the sunblock. Okay. Toys? Yes, check. Alright, we’re on the road. But the road is not the same when pushing the stroller. That favorite route is now filled with potholes and construction, fallen branches and cars that I once easily skirted past. I used to run in the busy road’s shoulder, but with the boys it makes me a little too nervous. I run on the sidewalk instead. Block by block I clunk over the curbs shaking the bolts of the stroller and my shoulders loose. That’s okay, the boys are good and we’re moving. Then I hit the bridge I’ve run over for years and realize the sidewalk disappears and there isn’t a median. How did I never notice it before? So I turn back.
I turn a corner looking for a new route and pass a small park. That’s where I lose the boys. They point and scream at all the children playing. I stop out of guilt. They play for thirty minutes before I can pry them back into the stroller. We get home. In my two hour window I ran about thirty minutes. My shortened runs quickly started to show around my gut.
Before the boys came along I believed stay at home parents had the best schedule for exercise. Completely flexible, no more working around commutes or early meetings. I used to wake up before work and run for more than an hour before the sun came up to stay in shape. I mountain biked and hiked all through our local hills. I went surfing with friends.
So what works? In part, acceptance. I can’t rely on exercise as much as I would like to keep me healthy. Diet has to play a bigger role. Besides running, I can work some task related exercise into other parts of the day. Walking to the grocery store instead of driving, for instance.
What else? Preparation. We also have a bike stroller that I can have loaded up in the car and on the bike path pretty quick. We include a packed lunch for that. I stop at the park and give the boys their exercise too. Having everything gathered the night before helps so I only have to deal with the unpredictable, (a.k.a. twin boys.)
Though I like to get outside, another option is checking with your gym to see if they offer child care services. An uninterrupted hour of exercise is a great thing. Be aware, some gyms offer this for free while others will cost you more than the gym membership itself.
