PapaKind

Broccoli and a Spanking

2007-10-30T11:20:00.001-07:00

A guy I know is a DJ on a country music station. I guess it's half DJ, half morning drive time personality. Apparently, he's pretty good. I tell him I keep trying to listen to his show, but every time I turn on his station they're playing that country music again, and I just can't wade through the songs to get to the wacky DJ hijinks that America loves so bad.

Anyway, he says they recently had a "worst parenting moments" call in segment. Had I waded through the country music long enough to hear about it, I may have called to tell this story:

The other day, my middle son Henry, 8, was whining and crying about going out to dinner at a local ice cream shop. They have hot dogs, sandwiches, chips, ice cream, you know...all the things kids hate. Anyway, God bless my son, but he was being a real brat about this. He wanted Wendy's. My mother was a good cook, and we had many fine meals in my home, but I also thought about all the pot roast, stew, and lima beans I endured growing up, and I was ready to explode on Henry's ingratitude. I grabbed him firmly (but not violently) by the shoulders, got all up in his grill, and said in my loud, menacing voice, finger pointed (but not jabbing) at his chest, "Listen, we're going to Burr's!!! If you don't like it, then your freakin' dinner is going to be broccoli and a spanking!!! Is that what you'd rather have?"

He shut up quick and was good for the rest of the night, which surprised me, because that tactic doesn't often work with him. It may have actually been one of my finest parenting moments. I'll admit, I didn't feel bad about it at all. I think it was the "freakin'" that did it.

When Did You Last See Your Father

2007-10-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

Coming soon from Sony Pictures Classics is "When Did You Last See Your Father," from British poet Blake Morrison's memoir. Booklist says of the book: "Dr. Morrison's multiple faults and failings are examined as candidly as his virtues, allowing the author to fully explore and analyze the complex nature of the ties that inextricably bind a son to his father throughout the entire course of his life." Starring the outstanding tandem of Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent. This is right up PapaKind's alley, so you know we'll be lining up at midnight for it! Well, maybe...

Would it be good to see this with your own dad, or weird?

Back To School

2007-09-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Time Magazine's article Are We Failing Our Geniuses? that discusses America's disregard for its brightest youngsters. The article notes that programs for mentally retarded school age children get a full 10 times the funding that programs for the mentally gifted receive. John Cloud, author of the piece, reports that although conventional thinking may justify such inequities by the suppostion that bright kids will do OK on their own, the reality is that highly gifted youth (IQs in the 145+ range) drop out of school at the same rate as their less advanced peers, and have just as much difficulty forming relationships and adjusting to an adult world. Cloud profiles the Davidson Academy of Nevada, a public charter school founded by philanthropists Janice and Robert Davidson; some of its 45 students have moved from across the globe to attend. The students are prodigies, some of whom have exhausted the University of Nevada at Reno's entire undergraduate math curriculum in their middle teens. They are national chess, spelling bee, and science award winners, and they seem to be in the perfect environment, as many of them tell of being routinely beaten up by public school classmates for their precociousness.

Cloud also talks about multiple grade skipping as a solution to public school's failure to adequately address the needs of its "genius" students, and points to research challenging the notion that a child is best off with classmates of his or her exact age. In one study, extremely advanced students who are allowed to skip more than three grades fared much better in later life than a different group of similarly gifted kids who stayed in their own grades.

As I read this article in the doctor's office, waiting to find out if the mole he removed from my lip was cancerous (it wasn't, hurray! And since biopsying the mole removed it from my face altogether, well, that's just a happy byproduct), I was getting pretty emotional thinking about my own gifted kids, just into the new school term, and what the next few years have in store for them. Now don't get me wrong, my kids are bright, but they're not candidates for the Davidson Academy. Even so, knowing that bright, beautiful children often end up on dark pathways as they negotiate adolescence scares the shit out of me. To think that all we have to do is parent these gifted kids "correctly" to stave off those dangers is a foolhardy notion.

Josie, five years old and youngest in her first grade class, doesn't worry me...yet. Her morning tantrums during dressing and teeth brushing are somewhat predictable during this early September adjustment period, although that doesn't make them any more bearable. She's smart, funny, creative, beautiful, and popular, but I don't think she's in danger of getting beaten up for leaving the rest of the first grade in the dust academically. Since I don't feel like I need to worry about her yet, I don't. Her time will come. Also, I pray she doesn't peak in first grade, which I think can be the fate of popular kids.

Henry, eight years old in the third grade, worries me most of all, but he's still entrenched in innocent years. One of his classmates from first grade skipped straight to third the next year, and he was a bit jealous. Although he has the raw brain power to do much more advanced work than the standard third grade curriculum, his selective mutism and social anxiety have led us to conclude that the best situation for Henry is almost always the most comfortable one. For some of us, decisions based on comfort level can mean stagnation and acquiescence; for Henry it means survival. Although he's been identified by the school district as "gifted and talented," I can't imagine sending him to the district's GATE school, with its diminutive, petty-minded, punitive principal, its prison-like obsession with security, its lame dress code, and its decided lack of inspiring teachers. My older son, Vincent, attended that school for grades two through six, as a couple of Henry's peers are doing now, so I know of which I speak.

However, despite my intense dislike of the local GATE school, and as much as I hate to admit it, it was probably the perfect environment for Vincent simply because he was surrounded every day by other gifted students. These kids pushed each other academically, and in their own geeky ways, reinforced the notion that "to be smart is not to be uncool." But Henry remains at the neighborhood school without any official program for gifted students, because this is where he's comfortable. We are three houses down from the local school, so if need be the eight and five year old can walk on their own each day. Sending a kid to the GATE school screws this all up. It sounds self serving, I know, but there is nothing in our family of five's daily routine that require us to drive a car. Part of our kids' education, in our mind, is to model sustainable living and shrinking our environmental footprint. Our family has a long way to go in this regard, but living, working, and going to school within walking, bicycling, or transit distance is very important to us. So the local school it is for Henry and Josie.

And it's a good school. It's where the gates stay open to parents, where teachers have hugs for their former students and parents alike, where the community comes together - many on foot - twice daily for dropoff and pickup, baseball, soccer, and other neighborhood activities. It's where Henry knows by first name all 60 kids in the three third grade classes, where he remains very popular despite his frequent unwillingness to talk to anyone else.

But I admit that I wonder if he'd be better off at the GATE school despite transportation concerns and my personal dislike of the administration. I wonder if we're coddling him too much. What little I know about parenting can be summed up by this: Be open minded, but trust your gut. And my gut knows that some kids need to be pushed, while others, when pushed too much, break. It's almost impossible to push Henry without him breaking, which he does loudly and often. When he's gently guided, he does much better. This is a kid whom I can see spinning off the planet in a whirlwind of fear, anger, and anxiety, or settling in to a happy, healthly existence with the right amount of nurturing and support. I hope we're doing right by him.

Vincent, 12 and starting seventh grade right now, seems to have his head on pretty straight, but my anxiety about his adolescence sometimes overwhelmes me. Entering the fourth week of middle school, my seventh grader is flourishing. I think he was more than ready to leave his insular grade school, where his entire class of gifted peers stayed together in the same group year after year, into a world of multiple teachers, classes, new kids, P.E., speech and debate, lockers, homework, riding the bus, buying lunch at the snack shack, and all that good stuff. I hated seventh grade, and everything about school between the ages of 9 and 20, but Vincent is eating it up.

Nevertheless, I worry about him, mainly because he has my DNA.

Although, like my kids, I was identified as gifted by the school district when I was young, I come from a long line of alcoholics. By the the time I was Vincent's age, entering my fourth week of seventh grade, I was already smoking weed, cutting class, and getting in trouble with the law. By eighth grade I had seen the wrong side of the city jail, by tenth was stumbling home with broken teeth after blackout drinking, and by 11th, was expelled from school. Later that year, a drug overdose hospitalized me, and by the grace of God I found my way to a rehab program that worked, and I found a new way of life without drinking and drugs. 21 years later, I still haven't had a drink or a drug, but I know how uncommonly lucky I was. Despite a personal commitment to ruin my life as early and quickly as possible, I was spared by hitting a hard bottom early, by having the gift of understanding parents and the support of other recovering teens and counselors. Life hasn't always been rosy since then, but it has been a life of meaning and learning. I continued to make mistakes and bad decisions, as everyone does, but eventually found a way to learn from them and move forward. Somewhere along the way I started making good decisions, and I wouldn't trade my life now - with the job, house, wife and kids - for anything.

But watching Vincent, the exact same age I was when I started my downward spiral, freaks me out a little, and not only because he looks just like I did at that age: long hair, smart, goofy, short. However, unless he's hiding it really well, I don't see any signs that he's straying from the straight and narrow. He gets himself out of bed, dressed, breakfasted, and out the door to the bus stop by 7:10 sharp...with time to spare. He's home promptly after school, and hits the books hard. He joined the speech and debate club, and is beside himself with how cool it is. He has a good group of friends, but they don't log a whole lot of time together outside of school hours, which maybe isn't a terrible thing (whereas my friends and I at that age roamed the city endlessly, with no supervision, looking for - and always finding - trouble). Where I was desparate to be cool, needed the long hair, slip-on Vans, flannel shirt over black rock tee, Vincent could care less. His only line in the sand is his long hair, which he allows us to trim only rarely and reluctantly. Other than that, he's not wrapped up in what he wears, what kind of music kids are listening too, and has almost no clue about who's who and what's what in pop culture. And I love all these things about him; so far, he's allowing himself to develop into...himself, purely and freely. I hope he keeps it up.

So, while none of my kids are going to apply for the Davidson Academy any time soon (and neither will 99.9999% of the nation's youth), I'm hoping to get a pass for one more year without experiencing first hand the pure hell I put my parents through. I'll keep struggling along, learning as I go, like everyone else.

"What He Left"

2007-08-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Comedian Jack Gallagher has a wonderful trilogy of one man shows that are essentially memoirs of growing up Irish Catholic in New England, moving to California to begin a career in show business, raising two sons, and learning to love the aged father he always thought didn't want him around.

Gallagher's done all the late night talk shows, comedy tours, some short lived sitcoms, recurring spots on Curb Your Enthusiasm, commercials, and has hosted a number of public television series. He brings to the standard comedian's arsenal a level of intelligence, honesty, and a particular attention to family and fatherhood issues that is rare. Below is a short transcript from a scene toward the end of "What He Left," the final monolgue of his trilogy, which also includes "Letters To Declan," and "Just The Guy."

[At the prospect of selling the family home,] it will honestly take me a long time to drive by that house and know that strangers live there...and I know what I have to do. I have to create that kind of place for my boys, I have to create the kind of place that gives them safe memories for the rest of their lives, no matter where they are, no matter how old they are, or how much confusion is swirling around them. I need to create a Plane Street for them.

And as I look back on everything that happened, everything that I told you through my eyes now, through the eyes of an adult, a father, as I listen to him on these tapes, I understand how difficult it was for him to get us the things he thought we needed. But he never stopped trying. I understand now that my dad loved us, he just didn't know how to tell us. And at a certain point, he realized he wanted us around him.

He describes growing up in a big New England farmhouse on which his father worked obsessively every weekend of his life, in order to "recharge his batteries" for Monday morning when he had to go to work at a job he hated. When his father switched to a career he loved late in life (to sell church furniture...didn't know where that stuff came from, did you?), the unspoken lesson to his five children was "find something you like to do, and don't settle for anything less." A lesson Jack heeded well, as he carves out a modest show business career while headquartering in, umm...Sacramento, California.

Jack's brother gave their dad a tape recorder late in his life and said "Start talking. Tell us everything you can remember about yourself, your family, your life. The only rule: Tell us the truth...in your own, clear, voice." Their father eventually recorded several hours of tapes that proved to be their own priceless memoir for the Gallaghers, and the foundation upon which "What He Left" is built.

I strongly recommend "What He Left," and Jack's entire three DVD series, which can be purchased directly from his website. They are $20.00 apiece, but if you buy two I think they'll throw in the third. In my opinion, this would make for a distinct gift, an ideal choice for almost anyone, but maybe especially the fathers and sons in your life.

On Becoming a Kind Father

2007-04-16T12:49:00.001-07:00

Journalist, author, and environmental lawyer Calvin Sandborn diagrams his life growning up with an alcoholic, abusive father who died when the author was 13 in his just released book "Becoming the Kind Father." The article below from the Sacramento Bee is worth a read for those interested in the struggle of those raised in hostile households turning themselves around.

The interviewer, Cynthia Hubert, mixes in some good stuff from other authors, researchers, and psychologists:

William Pollack, in his book "Real Boys," also challenges the idea that boys should be raised like "little men." Teaching boys to be silent and tough, he argues, damages them emotionally and sets them up for anger, depression and alienation in later life.

From early childhood, boys learn that to be successful, they should never demonstrate weakness and never show emotions other than anger, Pollack writes. They are taught that success means taking risks and being macho, and that their goals should be to achieve status, dominance and power.

"Boys start to believe in this false sense of self," Sandborn says. "They start to feel that they are no better than their performance, than their car or their big contract or their salary. They don't have real relationships with themselves, so they can't have relationships with other people."

A real relationship with yourself. That's a heavy one, and I like seeing that other men see it as important. Realizing its importance and being successful at it are two different things, however. I like to think I'm making progress in this area.

I'm going to send you here for the article: The kind father. But if you have a love of registering at websites, entering your likes, dislikes, income level, phone number, and choosing yet another password, feel free to read the orginal here.

The Father Politic

2007-03-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

Columnist Ruben Navarrette ties in the personal, the political, and the paternal in this recent column about the birth of his first son, the expectation of future conflict based on his and his brothers' discord with their father, and likewise dad's earlier friction with gramps. This dubious tradition doesn't stop with the Navarettes of course, as two presidential contenders' father and son relationships get discussed on the national stage almost daily: Rudy Guliani and his plea for privacy on the chilly relationship with his twenty one year old son, and Barack Obama's well documented abandonment - although he never expresses it that way - by his Kenyan dad, whom he met only once again after his parents' divorce when he was two years old. Navarrette takes the responsibility of raising a son seriously, and like the rest of us, vows to do a better job than his old man.

A generation ago, my father and uncles collided with my grandfather...much of the conflict tended to be over competing egos and differences in opinion about how we all should live our lives.

I'd like to break from that family tradition with my own son, Santiago. Along the way, I don't suppose I'll be seeking parenting advice from Rudy Giuliani.

The Sacrifice Play

2007-02-28T15:57:00.000-08:00

Hall of Fame Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller's father, a farmer, created his own "field of dreams" for his son on the family's farm in Van Meter, Iowa, in the 1930's. He leveled a pasture, removed trees, built bleachers, and installed electric lights and a generator in the barn so young Bob could practice at night. Feller, a Hall-of-famer and eighty-eight now, had a stellar major league career. He never had to play minor league ball, and today holds the record for most wins by a Cleveland Indians pitcher. Would he have achieved such stature without the indefatigable support and sacrifice of his father? Perhaps. My wife, Amy, would remind me that Mrs. Feller was almost doubtlessly sacrificing her own fingers to the bone in the house, cooking, scrubbing, ironing, washing, and tending to the other little Fellers, while dad and son threw leather-covered balls back and forth outside in the Iowa twilight. Fair point.

I was reading about Feller recently and thinking about baseball, what it means to my family and me, and the sacrifices that I - and my wife, of course - make so our kids can play. Make that kid. After much poetic waxing in previous years about the nobility of our national pastime, and the wholly propitious affect it has on our kids, my older boys have decided to sit this season out. For different reasons. Vincent, 11 and a fair player, simply seems to be outgrowing team sports. I think the novelty is wearing off. The uniforms, pictures, parties, trophies (yes, everyone still gets a trophy), have lost their lustre. Most of his friends are done playing, and his interests lie elsewhere: Runescape, Douglas Adams, kung fu. Although he still enjoys watching baseball on TV and at the ballpark, I suspect his interest lagged as mine grew, unlike Bob Feller. It's difficult for me to accept, because he's a pretty decent player. He would have had a chance to have a banner season as one of the older kids in his division.

Henry, 8 this spring, also loves watching baseball on TV, going to root for the triple-A River Cats at Raley Field, and playing MLB 2K6 on GameCube. However, he's taking a pass this year as well. In Henry's case, I understand a little better. He has an anxiety disorder called selective mutism, which renders him utterly unable to speak to adults or new people beyond a nod or shake of the head. Otherwise, he speaks normally (and loudly, articulately, and often), but to his teachers at school, to his coaches on sports teams, to kids he doesn't know well, he's "the silent one," and although he doesn't like it, at this point he doesn't seem to be able to help it. School is mandatory, so we find ways to help him make do. We lobby for kindly teachers, rather than uptight ones. But sports is not mandatory in our household - not having built a full scale infield in my backyard - and between baseball and soccer, and all the coaches, assistant coaches, team moms, other parents, and strange kids, it ends up being an uncomfortable experience for him. Though he is tall, strong, and fast (where Vincent, while fit and focused, is not terribly athletic), Henry's anxiety follows him onto the baseball diamond every game. Although when in t-ball he mastered the soft-toss pitch, upon advancing to the "rookie" division, and facing the 42 mph pitching machine, he just could not adjust. His bat was a bit long for him, but he refused to try a different one. At the plate, he bailed out with his front foot every time without fail, and would not take any advice on how to correct his swing. Needless to say, he registered exactly one hit last season, grounded out two or three times, and struck out, oh, about ten thousand times. He never seemed too upset about it, but striking out over and over again is painful for a kid, for a dad, and for just about everybody who wants to see a smile on that silent little boy's face.

I wish Henry would have stayed with it, let me or the other coaches help him with his swing, his equipment, his stance. There's no better feeling than smacking that ball past the infield and finding yourself, improbably, panting wild-eyed on first or second base, hoping your teammate does his job and brings you around. "How did I get here? Oh yeah, I put myself here!" Likewise the unbridled joy of making a good play in the field and putting another kid out (and let some other dad worry about that boy's ego). But Henry just didn't want to go through it all again, and since we let big brother off the hook this year, we felt we couldn't really force him to play if he didn't want to. I offered to coach his team, but to no avail.

Ironically, it was only five year old Josie who was really lobbying to play this season, her first. We weren't going to let her, because with two older siblings playing, and the superfluity of two years of t-ball in front of her coupled with the evidence of early sports burnout in our family, if not America, we decided it might be best to start her the following year, at age six, which some still may say is too young for organized team sports. But when the boys dropped, and Josie still lobbying loudly and fiercely to play, and my seat on the youth baseball board of directors suddenly seeming excessive without a kid playing in the local league, we relented. Maybe relented is the wrong word. Amy relented, I jumped for joy.

So I'm coaching her t-ball team and loving every minute of it. What I'm not loving at the moment is my second year of being the director of scheduling for the league. Running a non-profit recreational program of any kind is a labor, especially when done in the spare time of volunteers after their own long workdays. But when you run such a program for kids, there's a special incentive to do it right. Kids deserve to have the program run smoothly so they can succeed or fail on their own merits, and not because a bunch of adults didn't know what we were doing. Besides actually coaching the teams, there are uniforms to order, fields to maintain, sod to lay, concessions to order, programs to make, advertisements to sell, registration forms to process, letters, e-mails, and newsletters to write, fundraisers to manage, websites to maintain, checks to write and deposit, umpires and photographers to hire, baseposts to set, sprinklers to fix, locks to re-key, gear to distribute, coaches to recruit (sometimes involving much arm twisting and guilt-trip laying), and of course, games and practices to schedule.

There are lots of hard jobs involved in running our league. The job I enjoy the most is simply hanging around with the other board members, going to the monthly board meetings, chit-chatting with the parents on registration day getting their paperwork processed, talking to the kids, finding out who's on whose team this year, the dirt, the gossip, the camraderie, it's mostly all fun stuff. But bullshitting doesn't really accomplish anything, unfortunately. My real job in helping this league run is as the scheduler. Some think this job is the hardest, others think that title goes to the league president, concessions director, maintenance director, or equipment manager. I can't say, as this is the only job I've had for the league. As an analyst, the job suits me. I sit behind my computer using esoteric software to produce an operational plan of action that everyone needs and uses, but few think about how it happens. It's what I do at work, and it's what I do for the baseball league.

This time of year, late February, when I've cleared the enormous hurdle of producing the season schedule for 22 teams (always considering not to schedule too many home/away streaks, or too many streaks against the same teams, a balanced tournament schedule, rest restrictions for pitchers, balanced Sunday or Monday games, not too many early games, not too many late games, not too many games in a week, nor too few, don't stretch too far into June, can they play during spring break? Good Friday? Day after Memorial day? - the considerations are immeasurable), and move on toward the equally enormous hurdle of scheduling practice times and locations for those 22 teams, I tend to get overwhelmed. And grumpy.

This job comes as a sacrifice to my family, those playing baseball (Josie) and those not (everyone else). Of course, I'm also doing it for the kids of the community. I love the neighborhood I live in, kids call me "Coach" wherever I go, I know just about all of them and their parents, and ultimately, they are having a positive experience. However, despite the magnanimous rah rah, I think my own family could give a flip about the kids of the community when I'm locked down behind my computer, spending a full hour trying to figure out where the hell the Astros and Padres are supposed to practice on Wednesdays with all available fields taken up. The sacrifice of coaching Josie's team is well worth it, as it was coaching the boys' teams in the past. Working directly with the kids is like manna from above. Whether Josie sticks with baseball or not, she gets to remember the matching hats she and her dad wore, and I don't know what all else kids appreciate, if much more than that, about their fathers coaching their teams, not having had a father who coached me. But scheduling all these practices and games, far removed from my team's little faces, is killing me. I know that in two weeks when most of this is behind me, I'll say "that wasn't so bad," and take pride in a thing done well. But right now? Ouch!

Bob Feller's father might think I'm a chump, but I've decided that next year, my third, will be my last as scheduler. I'll keep coaching Josie as long as she'll let me, and I'm willing to take on another task for the league if needed, but one that doesn't require the sheer number of hours working alone in the den while the rest of the family is engaged with each other. Of course, by engaged I mean someone is crying, someone else is tattling, another is glued to a video game, the cat is on the counter licking out of the mayonaisse jar, the guinea pigs are crying and the fishbowl stinks. Still, I don't want to miss any more of it.

PapaMonkey

2007-01-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

This is a bit of a departure for PK, as I'm less interested in the science of fathering than the actual practice of fathering: the feelings and conflicts, the personal victories and defeats, the struggles to bridge the divide between the fathers we had (or the kind we wish we had), versus the kind we are, how we ended up that way, and if we're satisfied with that.

But here from my local fish wrap comes an article about a certain kind of PapaMonkey, the titi monkey of South America, who is a pretty darned-tootin' nurturer of baby titi monkeys. Conversely, the MamaMonkeys play the reluctant, only semi-interested, sometimes downright hostile caregiver, kind of like me during the World Series.

Titi babies tend to ride draped across a parent's shoulders, and when mom wants the kid off her back, her favorite strategy for shifting responsibility is to make the baby cry.
"She'll rub it up against the side of the cage, or in the wild against a tree branch, to make it cry, or nip it a little, and then daddy will come get it," Bales said.
Both parents will come running to their baby's cry if researchers place the infant on the ground, but mom will often pick it up and hand it to dad.

I'm going to send you here for the article: At UC Davis, monkey dads are nurturers. But if you have a love of registering at websites, entering your likes, dislikes, income level, phone number, and choosing yet another password, feel free to read the original here.

The Father I Carry With Me

2007-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

Fred Moramarco, professor of literature at San Diego State University and editor of Poetry International, the university's annual journal of contemporary poetry, wrote in 1998 of his father, an Italian immigrant who was 50 at the author's birth. The Father I Carry With Me is a long piece, but worth spending time with, as Moramarco imagines the passionate, ambitious young man his father must have been, and the calm, elderly man - gone since 1966 - he remembers first hand. As Moramarco is 56 at the time of the writing, he finds himself at the very age his father was during the author's first memories of him. When he shaves his beard, he sees the old man hiding there.

Sooner or later men become their fathers. Here I am now six years into the time of his life and his face hovers beneath my beard, his fingers trace mine on the piano keyboard, his mouth sips at the tomato sauce I make each summer. With each year I live I feel more the Father, some archetypal provider who will take care of things. Maybe that's moving from father to grandfather, a grand father figure that knows what the right thing to do is. This is one of the illusions of male life, since both fathers and grandfathers are only men, and the patriarchal roles assigned to men are a burden as well as a pleasure

Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?

2007-01-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

This short essay from psychologist Daniel Gilbert, published in Time Magazine on Fathers Day 2006, "Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?" is worth a read. Although being a dad is a complicated thing, I think most of us who are or were actively involved in raising our children would agree that yes, we enjoy it; it is a worthwhile and rewarding effort. But does it make us happy? Gilbert has studied the science of happiness, and has found that there is often a large chasm between the things we expect to make us happy and the things that actually do.

Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.

Hero or Goat?

2006-12-29T17:01:00.000-08:00

Only time will tell whether my children remember me as a hero or a goat, as I often seem to exemplify characteristics of both. I played both the goat and the hero particularly well for seven year old Henry during the holidays.

On Christmas Eve day we set out on the long delayed mission to hand deliver Christmas cards, the first Amy and I have sent in several years, to local friends whose proximity made addressing and mailing unnecessary (although they would have received them much sooner than December 24 if we had). Of course this would be a bicycling adventure, and a chance for Henry and me to have some good father/son time. It was freezing cold, but he's a good sport and didn't complain as we covered a mile or two in the neighborhood. One addressee, however, was about two miles away, across the big streets and into another neighborhood. I am struggling to find that balance between gently pushing my kids to do things I think are good for them (just about anything that involves being outside), and shoving them so hard that they learn to hate those things, and me likewise. So I wasn't going to force Henry to ride over to Alec's house, but he was up for it despite the chill factor, and that made me very happy.

Of course, it took us forever to get there, not just because Henry's seven year old legs can't pedal as fast as mine, but because I had to stop and chit-chat with two different sets of people we ran into along the way, as well as pull over to take a phone call. For me, life is about stopping to chit-chat, taking phone calls, riding bikes; there's no other way I'd rather spend an afternoon. Being in the world, connecting with folks, soaking up the weather in the world's most indisputably agreeable climate, California. And to have my little buddy along with me, can I have my cake and eat it too?

But on the way back, his foot slipped off the pedal and he scraped the back of his leg a bit. He stopped, cried, sat on the sidewalk. It was a legitimate injury; the boy's not too prone to dramatics of that kind, but I tried not to make a huge deal out of the scrape. This may or may not be correct, but I try to approach my kids' minor injuries with concern and empathy commensurate with the actual damage. Maybe I'm a cold hearted bastard, but it grates on me to see a kid bump his knee, scream bloody murder, weep hysterically, then need to be held for a full hour. I give my kids lots of affection, lots of hugs, kisses, squeezes, but not as a reward for getting a scrape. I think there's a lesson in taking a hit, shaking it off, and moving on. Maybe my testosterone levels are too high, who knows?

I was patient, I waited, I gave a hug, but then it was time to move on. Perhaps I didn't give him as much TLC as he wanted, or maybe he was just getting tired now that we were on about mile five for the day. Regardless, his pace slowed to a crawl. I felt like I could barely keep my bike balanced I was riding so slowly, yet he was persistently twenty to thirty yards behind me, farther back than I'm comfortable with at his age and for the streets in question. Now I don't blame a kid for being slow, but it seems like every time I'd look back he was coasting. Coasting is great when you need to slow down or when you're descending a hill, but when you're crawling at a snail's pace through the city, my feeling is one needs to pedal, not coast.

Here is when that little voice inside me says "You are a complete prick. Your little boy who loves you to pieces is doing his best right now. He got himself scraped up, he had to wait while you stopped to socialize with a bunch of adults along the way, and now you're all pissed that he's riding so slowly. Lay off, Dad!" But I can't help it. It takes all the will power I can muster not to scream "Hurry the hell up! Quit coasting goddamit and pedal!" Actually, I did say these things, but I didn't scream them and I didn't curse. Finally, we roll down what passes for a hill in Sacramento and through a four-way stop that's usually not too crowded. Before the hill Henry had just caught up to me, but I didn't realize he had almost immediately then lagged twenty yards behind again. I cruised through the intersection, looked back, and sure enough, he hadn't even approached it yet. A car went in front of him, Henry waited, then he crossed without any problem. But I was pissed and I let loose. "Listen, you NEED to stay right behind me! I look back there and you're coasting, you're not keeping up! And then a car goes in front of you and I'm on one side of the intersection and you're on the other and that ain't cool!"

And he loses it. Lip quivering, eyes leaking, he starts blubbering. My head is screaming "You're an asshole! You're the worst father who ever lived! Why the hell are you picking on this kid? You're just like your stepfather! Henry's going to hate you, hate bike riding, hate Christmas, hate going outside, and it's all your fault!" Now I'm pissed at myself, I'm feeling bad for Henry, but we finish the final few blocks without incident. God bless that boy, he bounces back from stuff fairly easily when he wants to. I would have shut myself in my room for the rest of the day. We have a hug, I tell him I'm proud of him for riding so many miles, brag on him to Amy and all that good stuff. I still feel like a goat though.

Did I redeem myself by playing hero the next morning, Christmas, when I successfully hacksawed the exploding ink security tag Santa Claus mistakenly left on Henry's new Heelys skate-shoes, the present for which he waited patiently for months, but that the security tag made impossible to try out?

What will be our legacy as fathers to our children? Will they tally up all the times we acted like a jerk, weigh them against the times we came through, and judge accordingly? But how many heroic acts make up for just one time acting the goat? Or how many times are you allowed to get to get away with exhibiting crap parenting and still keep the kid's esteem? Does it really matter what our kids think of us? Is that the goal, to be well regarded? No, certainly not, but it seems like much of who we become depends on where we come from. And I think "where we come from" is not necessarily what it was really like there, but what it felt like there. Soon their lives will be about their friends, which is also "where we come from," but for these short years they are about us, God help them.

I'm ashamed when I think about that boy crying on the side of the street, his dad bitching at him. I'm proud when I remember the look in his eye Christmas morning when his Heely was rescued from the security tag. But maybe the trick is during the other spaces, the rest of the time, when I'm not playing the goat, or even acting very heroically. Maybe just being present in his life, making breakfast, shooing him out the door for school, playing with him, reading to him, making him do his homework and brush his teeth, going shopping, riding bikes, occasionally bitching at him, maybe just being myself is enough. Maybe.

Calling from the Shore

2006-12-28T21:05:00.001-08:00

"Fighting Father Dave," the Rev. David B. Smith, is a Parish priest, community worker, pro boxer, author, and father of three working outside of Sydney, Australia. In this column, The Pain of Non Custodial Fatherhood, Father Dave tells contrasting stories of saving his daughter from drowning, and years later sitting by her bedside helplessly as she recovers from a drug overdose. The piece is an intelligent lament on the role non custodial fathers are supposed to play in a child's life, and how this contradicts what we thought fatherhood was supposed to be like.

This is not just my problem. It’s the dilemma of modern fatherhood, particularly acute for non-custodial fathers. We’re supposed to be in the picture, somewhere, but not as fathers, not acting like real men. We’re supposed to be in the background somewhere, on the shoreline, offering helpful advice when it’s asked for, but if we see our children going down, our hands are tied. We can appeal to the mother, to the police, to the school, or to child welfare, but we’re unable to act like men and do anything.

Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot

2006-12-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite writers, Pat Conroy, eulogizes his father, Col. Donald Conroy, in this oft-printed piece from 1998. Col. Conroy was the real life "Great Santini" made famous by his son's novel, which was turned then into the Acadamy Award nominated film starring Robert Duvall. Pat Conroy, throughout his career, has attempted to articulate the reconciliation between damaged families and meaningful lives. He has, in my opinion, done so successfully with equal parts humor and heartbreak.

Some of you may have heard that I had some serious reservations about my father's child-rearing practices. When The Great Santini came out, the book roared through my family like a nuclear device. My father hated it; my grandparents hated it; my aunts and uncles hated it; my cousins who adore my father thought I was a psychopath for writing it; and rumor has it that my mother gave it to the judge in her divorce case and said, "It's all there. Everything you need to know."

What changed my father's mind was when Hollywood entered the picture and wanted to make a movie of it. This is when my father said, "What a shame John Wayne is dead. Now there was a man. Only he could've gotten my incredible virility across to the American people."

Grass is Always Greener

2006-12-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

Tomas Muniz, a terrific writer and radical out of the East Bay, has a powerful post over at mamazine.com called Dazed and Confused, in which he desparately tries to come to grips with his teenage son's marijuana use.

Lying about it. That was the clincher. I needed serious help. He seemed more comfortable making up extravagant explanations for me than talking to me about his choices, his decisions, his willingness to take the consequences if need be. Instead I got, "No really, I just took this bud from a friend cuz I didn't want him to smoke cuz, you know, drugs are bad." Followed by his sad little smile. Help me!

My Father's Footsteps

2006-12-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

Jockomo has a great post over at his blog called Why I Don't Build Boats for a Living, about the complicated period many sons of successful men go through when they realize, for whatever reason, that they don't want to go into the family business.

Throughout the years, though, a certain group of people – almost like an elite underground, or purveyors of a profound open secret – would look at me and say, “You’re not related to the boat builder, are you?” This filled me with a strange mixture of pride and shame. The pride came from the confirmation that I was indeed the son of the great boat builder. The shame came from that fact that while I could see these people were impressed – they were talking to an apple that had fallen very far from the tree. In fact, the branch kind of coiled back, and in slingshot fashion, jettisoned this apple out of the orchard. Of course, I should feel nothing but satisfaction that I am my father’s son, and I should not be ashamed that no one is ever going to look at my son’s driver’s license and say “Keaton - are you the son of the great California State paper pusher?” I also feel a bit regretful that I did not pursue my father’s craft, though I know it would have been a tough tutelage.

Rides of Passage

2006-12-19T23:19:00.000-08:00

A post of my own: Godspeed, Rhode Gear, from June, 2006, when I got incredibly sentimental about the pending retirement of the mounted bike seat that had secured the rear ends of all three of my kids in its years of service. The seat is now retired, but I can close my eyes for a split second and feel the bump of tiny kid shoes into my hips, my whole back warm and tingling with awareness of the little body riding back there, smoothly rolling through the city with all that confidence and faith in (gulp!) me!

I just plain didn’t like the idea of my little guy riding way back there behind me, enclosed in his screened bubble, strapped in with a five-point harness and helmet, down at ground level. How much fun is that? No, I wanted him right up there with me where all the action was.

I wanted us to be able to talk as we rode.

PapaKind

2006-12-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

Why PapaKind?

Well, I was getting inspired by a few things out there on the web, mainly men talking about relationships with their fathers. It's an interesting thing: a man and his dad, as it also informs his relationships with his own kids, maybe especially his sons. I'm a 37 year old man in Northern California with a decent relationship with my own dad, however I mostly grew up several hundred miles away from him. The man who was much more involved in my upbringing, at least since I was eight years old, was my stepfather, who died in 1994 when he was 52 and I was 24. My relationships with both of these men was complicated, and still today - with two sons and a daughter of my own - I find I spend a fair amount of time thinking about my two fathers: the difficult upbringing with an emotionally unstable stepfather, whose love could be as fierce as his anger depending on the day of the week, or time of the day; and my more even tempered biological father who, despite his love for me, remained a more distant figure - geographically and emotionally - for most of my youth. I love and I'm grateful for my real dad, 68 this year, but I still miss my stepfather tremendously as well. I hope to write more about these two men.

Of course, I have two of my own sons now, and who knows what my legacy to them will be. One, 11 year old Vincent, fittingly, is a stepson to my wife. I became a stepson myself at eight years old when my mom moved us to Los Angeles to live with my new stepfather, 400 miles from my real dad. Vincent's mother and I, however, when we split made a commitment not to make the same mistakes our own sets of parents had made: moving a child far away from the other parent. I have to believe this is a positive thing, in the long run, for Vincent. My other kids, Henry, 7, and Josie, 5, live with my wife Amy and me full time, and like all dads I'm learning as I go.

As I look back on my own childhood and think about how I might avoid the mistakes I felt my own fathers made, I find that not only do I make brand new mistakes, I also make the exact damned mistakes I swore I wouldn't. I'm overly critical, I yell, I use my voice and my size to intimidate, I preach, I drone, I'm distracted. These were all criticisms I leveled at my own fathers, between the two of them. But I also love, I hug, I kiss, I show up at every single game, concert, conference, recital, and I tell them every single day how proud I am of the young people they are turning out to be. Between my two fathers I got a fair amount of this positive stuff as well.

So who knows? Maybe we men give our fathers too much credit in shaping our own lives. Maybe we were going to be who we are, regardless. And maybe so long as we're at least trying, we won't fuck our own sons up too badly; maybe they're just going to be who they are as well.

What interests me is the process. If there are any questions I'd like this site to address, they are: what was it like to be a son to your father when you were a kid? What's it like to be a son to your father now? How is it with your own sons or daughters? What kind of issues did you deal with then, and what kind do you deal with now, in respect to fathering? Are they the same, different, how? Do you accept or reject your father's influence, or if both, how does that conflict affect your own parenting?

So when I come across good writing by fathers or sons that touch on some of these questions, I'll point you toward it. If you have any ideas of your own, or something you've read somewhere, please let me know. May you continue to be inspired.