5 Things Parents Shouldn't Say to Their Kids

1) "I don't care.

I say this one way too much and I know it is wrong, it is usually followed by "about this right now," but I need to be more conscious and ask that they tell me what ever beautiful life affirming gems or asinine crap they were planning to share later when I am not so overwhelmed.

2) "Act your age!" 

I have basically said the same thing, "Come on man don't act like a baby," but have not said it very often. 

3) "Say you're sorry!"

Sorry, there ain't nothing wrong with this one so long as you have previously taught them why they need to say they are sorry in certain situations, then reinforce it when one of those situations comes up.

4) "Don't you get it?"

"What about this don't you get," is my version of this wrong thing to say to your children, usually when I am helping my 4th grader with math and have been explaining something for 20 minutes, then he gets real bitchy with me, then I get annoyed and stop helping him for a while, come back 1o minutes later go over it one more time and then he gets it, this happens once a week, I know he is eventually going to get it, but he seems to fight against understanding what I am helping him with until I get upset and stop helping. I have tried refusing to help, but then he starts to have an anxiety attack about not finishing his home work and becomes non-functioning.

5) "I'm going to leave without you!" 

I do not ever say this one, particularly if we are out of the house. If we have a problem at the store or elsewhere in public I just say, we are going to leave now if you do not stop, and if they do not stop we leave. The closest I ever did to this was when my oldest son was four years old and we were at a soccer camp/practice and he refused to separate from me and participate for the first half of the first two classes. At the third class I told him if he did not get out there and participate I was going to go for a walk until the end of class when I would come back and pick him up, then began walking away, which was really walking around the running track that surrounded the soccer field. After I got about 15 yards away he joined in the practice and I slowly walked back over where he was practicing and could see me, so I guess I walked away for about 45 seconds. I did make sure he knew I was coming back for him though. I guess I should be expecting a call from child services any minute now.

My Bad

I thought the idea of my at the time 6 year-old son playing for a U7 soccer team that played in a U8 league with three practices a week was overkill and overly ambitious at least. Well that team playing up a level won all of their games, and just won a national tournament at Disney World.

Maybe driving three towns away for practice might have been worth it? I do not know, but I doubt I will be telling my son about the achievements of the team we left. I was debating whether to have him try out for the team next season, I am sure this will make competition for the squad much stiffer.

Reading Stamina

I am getting into the heavy reading for the Spring semester and man my reading stamina stinks, I should have read more during Winter break. A pleasant side note, I discovered quality yellow crayons can serve as decent highlighter replacements in a pinch. I tested a few brands of crayon and cheap waxy brands clump up on the page and will leave stains, so avoid those.

Me, Petty, No?

I had two conversations over new year's eve where separate friends debated little factoids I brought up as being incorrect. Now neither one is of any ground shaking importance, one is about the history of the town we all live in, the other about a soccer tactic used in a recent match. As a residue of growing up rather shy I usually don't make statements that I am not sure of outside of speaking with my immediate family, therefore I am usually sure of my statements.

So I politely let my doubters know that I stood by my statements and that I could back them up with documentation, which still didn't convince them. So big deal right, well my issue is not with them it is with my desire to send them web links to prove that I was not speaking out of my ass. As I write this I realize my problem is that I hate when people go on about shit they know nothing about, or stand strong on points where they can easily be proved wrong, so for someone to think that about me places me in a zone of discomfort. This has to do with me not allowing myself the freedom to be wrong. I understand that I am frequently wrong across many subjects, but I apparently can not deal with others thinking I am wrong when I am not.

So my desire to email friends links proving that I was not talking out of my ass is petty, no?

Thank God ...

... my massage therapist asked me about my kids having a half day or they would have been left out in the cold and freaking out, because I was totally unaware of it, I knew tomorrow was a half day, but not about today.

There's No Crying in Therapy!

I am currently in my third stint of going to therapy, since I was about 25 I have done about four years of therapy, which is a pretty lame percentage of time for someone who has a psych degree and is working to become a therapist, but anyway I cried for only the second time during a session in all those years of sessions, the strange thing is that it was after remembering that I had to quit my high school Freshman basketball team because my parents couldn't pick me up after practice and they did not bother and try to set up any alternate means for me to get home. My therapist thought that since it made me cry and I usually don't cry that it was a breakthrough, but I wonder if realizing that your parents did even a poorer job than you already thought they did really a breakthrough? Maybe I guess?

Which leads one to wonder, "How much fodder for the therapist's couch am I giving my boys on a daily basis?"

On Papers

My current paper writing style hearkens back to my more inefficient pre-computer underclassmen years in college. Then for a five page paper I would write about eight or nine pages on whatever moved me about the topic then make an outlines and literally cut and tape the pertinent parts of the draft into the outline and stay up all night retyping the final draft from the collage looking original.

Currently I am taking my source information, interviews and observations I had done, and writing a paper from that, basically treating all of the data as important, then going back and looking at what the professor wanted, what theories we have covered in class that seem to match up with what I have already written, once I am able to cram in an acceptable amount of applicable quotes and references, then I begin to slough off the unnecessary parts.

Hopefully by next semester I can regain the ability to make a well thought out outline in advance and then more efficiently just fill in the needed info into each slot, and writing the final draft will be more of a gentile smoothing out than an amputation of half of what I have written.

Too Often of Two Minds

Something I have realised lately is that I am too often of two minds and that is why I am less efficient than I would like to be. A prime example is with my current grad school class, I love the mental stimulation aspect of it, but the time it takes away from my life I hate. Other cases are when I am say doing laundry, but can not stop thinking about other chores that I have to do, and so I only put away half of clothes because I feel pressure to move on to the next thing and accomplish more, which winds up with me actually completing less tasks and results in the dreaded loose ends all over the place.
I go into my garage and think I should ride my bike some more before it gets too cold, but oh yeah, two weeks ago my kick stand came loose and made the bike un-rideable, and I never looked to see if I had the correct tool to fix it when it happened so now it is sitting unusable because I did not follow through when the initial incident occurred.

Slow Down and Let Them Learn

I need to slow down and leave enough time to let the kids make mistakes. Just as people I know let there kids act up and then cave into them because they, "Don't get to see them much, so they don't want their time together to be spent in conflict, with the kids unhappy and crying," which I see as either a lack of will on the parents part, laziness on the the parents part, or at least the wrong way with dealing with the time crunch that all seem to unnecessarily have in our post-modern lives. Me not making my kids learn how to properly tie their shoes or having them use cups with lids because I don't have time to clean up spills in the morning or afternoon or at dinner, expresses more about me than there ability to complete those tasks.

Both of my children are perfectionists and part of that may be genetic, but I know my wife has a tendency to couch things about school in a way that would lead to kids not feeling comfortable with possibility of failing, but I have to recognize that some of my actions in trying to make life run smoothly also does not allow them to go through the process of attempting / failing / learning / and eventual mastery of a task, which teaches them it's better not to try, or let Dad to it for me because I must not be able to do it.

Nothing builds confidence like overcoming an obstacle or mastering a task.

Is that why you yelled $#(%!!!

A few weeks ago my 8 year-old son forgot a book at school he needed to study for a test. He was getting very upset. That same night I misplaced something and was yelling at myself about it.

I went over to him and said, "See there is no reason to get mad at yourself, everyone looses things even daddy, I just lost something too."

"Oh, is that why you just yelled 'shit'?"

"Uhm, yeah it is. You are not in trouble, but you are not allowed to say that word okay, I am sorry that you heard me say it."

Waitlist 2010 / Accepted 2011

Oh yeah, I got wait listed for 2010 for the MSW program I applied to, and accepted if I choose to go in 2011, which is what I choose, I do not deal well with major life situations being up in the air, so I would rather know when I am starting rather than wait around for things to shake out.

Night and Day / Fear of a Wood Floored Planet

I have been trying to get more sleep to enable me to be more productive during the day when my boys are at school.

Yesterday my pre-schooler said he stepped on a staple when he was at school and it went into his foot. He said they were had to take off their shoes and just wear their socks when they were practicing their dance routine for graduation.

He did not seem hurt, and his teachers are really good at informing us when the students get hurt, and I figured that he would be in huge amount of pain if he had a staple in his foot so I basically did not believe him, and made him continue jogging his laps around the house.
Twice a week I have he and his brother jog around our house for exercise.

At first he seemed in pain, but very quickly was back to normal so I thought he was trying to get out of doing laps.

Fast forward four hours and we are getting ready for the boys to shower and he complains about his foot and when we look he has a centimeter long dark wood splinter buried in his foot. I asked him if the teachers helped him and he said they did not. I asked if he told them and said he did not, "They would not help or do anything about it." I explained to him that he was totally wrong that they would help him, which they would.

FUCK I was so wrong in my assessment, I really should have looked at his foot straight away, which I normally would have done, being a bit of a worrier when it comes to their health, but we were outside and my gut was feeding me bad information.

It took us at least 30 minutes to get it out because my son operates on a dramatic level that is usually only seen in operas or from the mouths of young broken hearted teenage girls, he was wailing the whole time, often when we were not even touching his foot. He got himself so worked up that he was pouring sweat and shaking and screaming at the top of his strong little lungs.
And when I say we got it out, I mean most of it, the hole looks dark, so their may be another thinner sliver of wood in his foot or their is just dirty wood residue in the wound.

After all of this I still had to give them showers and shower myself, so being worked up from the situation I did not get to bed any earlier than normal.

Then this morning my wife wakes me up at 5:15 and says, "Our 2nd grader wet the bed and I am going to workout at bootcamp, so you have to get up and help him."
Great, my sleep was encroached upon at both ends.

My pre-schooler is now afraid of wood floors, which we have a lot of in our house. I spoke with the teachers at his school and they said that they will not make the kids take off their shoes anymore, and that they wish he had told them because one of them is an EMT and would have had no problem cutting out the splinter seeing how she has performed emergency surgery in the past.

So the morals to this story are when it comes to health issues always believe your kids, they may not communicate exactly what happened to them, but if they are bringing up an issue there is a very good chance that something is going on, and regularly remind your children to tell their teachers, baby sitters, basically what ever grown up is responsible for them at that time, when something bad happens, be it bullies, boo-boos or uncomfortable interactions with weirdos and to tell them right away.

Excuses

We've had a few deaths in the extended family, bad allergies and illnesses being passed around, I have mostly successfully patched the thin spots in my front yard and have had the backyard sodded, my 2nd grader was "recruited" for the local travel soccer team's U8 development academy, so with the rec league team I coach it's soccer four days a week including twice on Saturday!

I should be hearing about my graduate school application soon.

So things have been busy I will hopefully be able to get back to posting on a more regular basis.

Windows Update

After about two weeks away from it I am back to working on the essay for my graduate school application. Initially besides directly answering the basic questions that they require you to cover in the essay I had just been downloading all kinds of experiences, anecdotes, traumatic stories and whatever else from my life that I hope at revision time I could craft into a narrative that will convey that while I have not been working the in the field that I have chosen to seek a masters in and frankly I have not been working outside of the home practically at all for 7 years, I do have the life experience to meld with my undergraduate psychology degree that will make me a good candidate for being accepted into a competitive Master's of Social Work program.

So I am 75% through the unfettered emptying my brain of every possible story and angle that I could possibly use to help me with this essay, and after two weeks of snow storms, school closing, and just being generally busy, distracted, uninspired and then ultimately a little scared to stare at the screen tasked with writing an essay that will determine my future and career, I sit down today a couple of hours later than I planned and start trying to get the process going again. There are five questions that have to be answered, I'll focus on first one because it is shorter, more simple, basically why did you choose this program at this school?
After about 15 minutes of b.s.ing things finally start to flow and then bzzzap, the computer starts to shut down, fuck am I going to loose everything? I got a update warning when I first logged on, which I chose to postpone or delay or whatever the choice for do it later was, I did not realize that it would comeback and not give me another chance to approve or deny the update.

This gave me flash backs to college and my work as an editor when cpu problems usually meant if you didn't save the file as you were working you would have to do it all over again. Well luckily things computers are better than when I first started using them because after a couple of minutes everything turned it self back on and all of my updates to the essay were still there. Still it's a reminder to save my file as I go along. Seems like a good time to break for lunch

Crash!

I am working on my Master's application personal statement right now and went from cranking rough draft of a heart felt retelling of my turbulent home environment and neighborhood growing up, memories flooding back, too many for this format but get them all down, edit it later. Making the connections of how these experiences led to my world view and how that world view will help me to help other and make the world a better place ... to I want to help people so they are healthy ... why are my answers so dumb now, oh, it's an hour past when I normally eat lunch and all I have had the past four hours is coffee, time for a break.

HONORS?

I am currently filling out a graduate school application for a MSW, and there is a field that asks for honors. The first thing that came to mind was Dean's List, maybe but probably not those lame Key Club honors, but when I saw what they listed as the examples: ABRCMS, DAAD, FAMU, Fulbright, IRT Consortium; I realised that they might not view my lame Dean's List achievements as honors.
Any advice from ya'll out there on the "interwebs"?

I am definitely fearing that to get accepted to a competitive program I will need to put in a few years of dues working at DYFS to up my Social Work street cred.

Honestly if I could get a legit MSW from Git A Degree Online In Yr Boxers University, (GADIYB U for short) I would, but my research into those Online schools came up with them lacking, and a bunch of annoying sales-ish calls from "counselors" who seemed more like once promoted telemarketeers.

Duct Tape is there nothing you can't do?

About a month ago I started noticing a scrapping sound every time I drove into or out of my driveway. After a week I looked under the car and saw that there is some kind of cover underneath the front of my car and it was coming loose.
With closer inspection I noticed that a number of screws had come out of this under-covering causing it to hang down. I kept saying to myself when the weather gets better I will try to do something about it.
The weather kept getting worse. Today I had to park illegally in a pay parking lot to drop my preschooler off at school. The lot was not shovelled out so I had to park on top of a bunch of hardened snow. It may just have dawned on you, but it did not dawn on me that backing up over said snow with this thing hanging from underneath the front of my car may be troublesome.
Well after hearing the crunch, followed by the now constant scraping sound I new cold weather or not I could no longer procrastinate on taking care of this issue.
I could not find any left over screws that fit the bill, so as it has on countless jobs before, duct tape leapt to the rescue, lets just hope it will hold up through the snow and sub-freezing temperatures.

Adjustment Disorder

... don't ever take seven years off of working, damn near impossible to get your mind back into the regular work world groove, especially when you view it as a rut ... when i lost my theater rating / secret shopper / spy gig i should have looked to get something new right away ...


Adjustment Disorders

The Problem With Facebook

I find that facebook makes me feel more lonely than connected, at best it gets me to miss old friends that I rarely think of otherwise.

How many friends from your past do you think about on a regular basis without being prompted by a networking website or old pictures?

My aunt and my cousin's tween daughter recently friended me on facebook, now it's like my Mom is watching me online, not that I post much on that site, but now I will have to monitor what I do if I do.

There is also a group from my High School called Dearly Departed that notifies me when someone dies from my school, I thought it would be just from my class, but it's like all years, so at least every week I get a message about someone who died, some of them surprisingly young, not the fun I'm looking for from facebook.

Neurotic Sit-com #3 - I Am Just Not Going To Talk Any More

Episode 2 in the works so I'm skipping to #3.

I seem to keep putting my foot in my mouth in my attempts at small talk with the mom's I encounter taking my boys back and forth to school.
This refers back to the Pre-K Hugs posting from last week.
At my little guys pre-school a mom came up to me to tell me that her daughter and all her little friends love my boy, her daughter talks about marrying him, and I recounted how my son mentioned her daughter "Sally" and stated that sometimes other girls bother him, but she really plays with him, I was expecting a smile or some kind of positive reaction, nothing, so I repeated myself, a faint smile at best, OK, well see you around.
Fast forward a week of my smiling and saying hi to this mom, my boy and I are alone in their cubby room, I hear a mom say, "Sally, blah blah blah ...," I look up, it's not the mom I talked to the other day, not the girl I thought it was, I basically insulted this women after she recounted her nice story to me pointing out one of two shitty things, one, that's nice that your daughter likes my boy but he finds her annoying or I have no fucking idea who you and your daughter are!

Now the truth is I am just not sure of their names, and my son does like her daughter, he had mentioned a few girls that he is friends with, but I was trying to be nice by making it sound like he only mentioned her daughter.
This is one of those times where if I can't have a time machine, I wish I was a cartoon character so I could blow my face off with a cannon and snap back to normal a second later.

Forgetting that my son's little lantern light fell under the car when he got out of it for school I ran it over after telling him we did not have time to get it now and promising him that I would get it after dropping him off at school, but my mind was else where.
---
Not as bad as the above but again not good, early this year my wife took our boys to her take your children to work day. My 2nd grader said I saw "Sanjay's" older brother at mommy's work.
So the next time I ran into "Sanjay's" mom outside of the grammar school I ask, does you husband work at XYZ Pharma?
her - No, he works at ABC Financials why?
me -oh my son thought he saw your older son on take your child to work day
her - what town is XYZ in?
me - "blah blah town" (a town 30 minutes away)
her - Oh yes, there are a lot of Sikhs in that area he must have seen another boy
me -oh ....

I did not cross my mind that he would have thought this other boy was one of hers because he had the same head wear that all Sikhs boys wear, I might as well said hey my boy saw your towelheaded little one the other day.
It's a case of my lack of prejudice meeting up with my lack of understanding how a little kid's mind works.

So again, I think I am just going to look at the ground and not talk to anyone any more.