New Athletic Moves

Over the course of the last few weeks the boys have been ratcheting up the intense rivalry that is common in young boys, scratch that all boys. The newest installment includes variations on base jumping, arm barring, bronc busting and lassoing. I'll explain:

Base Jumping: commonly done by professionals and just crazy people with parachutes. My kids satisfy one criterion namely craziness. They believe the stairs to be their own personal base jumping apparatus and they keep trying it from new heights. Antonio is now attempting to make it to the landing from the 5th stair. Angelo is still on the 3rd. Rarely do they land on their feet. They are lucky to land on all fours. A couple of days ago Antonio attempted to jump from a running start down the stairs. Let's just say that the slide into the front door was about as graceful as I've ever seen an almost five year old make.

The Arm Bar: a.k.a. "The Heisman." The spontaneous twitch that causes a sibling's arm to fly straight out to one side in order to block the other from accomplishing a task. It is often accompanied by the phrases "Me First" and "Hey Wait." It has been spotted in a few places around the house including as the kids are running down the stairs and as a precursor to base jumping. It has also been known to occur in the race to see who gets to open the car door. Antonio is taller, lankier, faster and ultimately better equipped to deliver the arm bar, but Angelo is by far more cunning in so far as I have thrice seen him evade the arm bar by ducking, twisting and just flat out running over Antonio.

Bronc Busting: Seen commonly in Rodeos and in nearly every Western movie. I actually caught Antonio trying to sit on Angelo the other day. Not only that but he had a blanket over Angelo's back and was attempting to ride him like a horse. Antonio explained later that the blanket was just like what cowboys put under their saddles when they ride horses. Here I was thinking he was torturing his brother and in his mind he was being quite considerate. I immediately put a stop to it, but can swear I hear it outside my door while I'm on conference calls.

Lassoing: One of the most basic cowboy skills. My boys take this to new places. Last time I saw them they were upstairs with a blanket over the arm of the couch (they are big on the whole blanket between them and the riding object) and were waving their belts in the air like lassos. Unfortunately they were fighting over who got to ride and lasso and it's not like the couch has two arms on it or anything right? Anyway Angelo decided to exact a little revenge on Antonio by grabbing the "lasso" while Antonio was waving it around and he yanked him off the couch. Antonio came down with a thud and having witnessed the previous bronc busting event I had a hard time not wetting myself laughing. Ah...sweet revenge.

I am a bit frightened about what may be coming in the near future but so far all fingers and toes are intact and they only have a few bruises to show for it and in my book that's a victory.

How Many Cheerios Can Fit In...

I noticed Angelo this morning had a cup full of Cheerios in the downstairs living room but didn't give it a second thought since he was snacking on them as he normally does. However, later while I was sitting downstairs I heard him proudly proclaiming that his brother's sword was full. I apprehensively shouted upstairs to him, "Full of what"? After receiving no response I ascended the stairs fearing the worst. When he saw me and ducked behind the couch I knew the answer couldn't be good. The pile of smashed Cheerios that littered the floor confirmed my suspicion. Sure enough Angelo had packed about three dozen Cheerios into the hilt and the sword sounded like a maraca when swung.

Needless to say Angelo ended up in his room in timeout which I could tell hurt his feelings. I went to the bathroom with the sword and shook it until all the Cheerios came out in the sink (about 2 minutes). After doing so I went in to Angelo's room and explained that I wasn't mad at him, but that I was disappointed that he was wasting food and made a huge mess. Had he stuffed the sword with anything else (Legos, Playmobil pieces etc.) I would not have been angry at all and it would have demonstrated an advanced understanding of spatial relationships and problem solving skills. He understood and gave me a big hug and the playing continued...this time without Cheerios.

This is not the first time we have found food upstairs. My two little Houdinis always manage to pilfer food out of the refrigerator or pantry while we aren't looking and sneak away with it. The remnants we normally find include half-eaten bananas, wrappers, apple cores etc. As a result we are now enforcing a strict no food upstairs policy to combat the covert food legerdemain. We are also considering a pad lock on the refrigerator and and a biometric lock for the pantry. Retinal scan anyone? With a third mini-man appetite on the horizon now may be a good time to look into food security.

Expectation Chart = Obedience

We figured it was time for the kids to begin earning allowances (at least the two older ones anyway) so Misty went to the store and procured a simple dry erase chore chart that we now prominently display on the refrigerator door. Amazing that just today we began setting chores for the kids and to our collective amazement the children immediately began to fall in line. Chores for the boys are relatively simple but definitely show cognitive ability beyond our wildest hopes. Non-negotiable responsibilities are as follows: make bed, put dishes in the dishwasher, clean up toys. Bonus responsibilities include being nice to each other/no timeouts for the day, eating dinner promptly.

I can proudly say that both boys were 5 for 5 today. Amazing what putting the key responsibilities on paper and objectively measuring performance against the expectations will get you...or is it? I spend most of my day finding ways to inspect what I expect from my job. Children are no different from adults in this respect it seems. Individuals will continuously push the envelope as far as they can until someone pushes back. Our push back today was to employ an expectation chart. For my job it is done with spreadsheets but the principle is the same. Tell people the metrics against which they will be measured and then actually measure them.

The payoff for the boys: we agreed to pay them each $1 per week if they receive checks for the non-negotiables. The bonus adds an additional TBD amount at the discretion of the parents that is subjective and depends perhaps most importantly on how much cash Daddy has in his wallet at the end of the week.

Antonio wants to save his money for more Playmobil figurines. He loves checking off the boxes at the end of the day. He is a trail-blazing rule-following excited little boy who can't wait to do what is expected of him to earn both praise and check marks. Angelo wants to ensure that he has at least as many checks as Antonio. Any questions, see earlier post titled "Making Sibling Rivalry Work for You."

Child Psychology 101: No Doesn't Really Mean No

I have often wondered why the word no and its various synonyms (stop, quit, don't etc.) tend to go unheeded a majority of the time when spoken by parents to their children. Dirty looks, furrowed brows and sneers are often met with the same kind of indifference. Mine for instance take varying approaches to avoid whatever it is that I want them to eschew; not out of malicious intent but merely out of forgetfulness. I think it is at best a momentary lapse of faculties and at worse a covert and highly planned obstinacy whereby my children are trying to drive me mad. In this exciting episode we shall explore how my two older children are trying to send me to the funny farm, but first let us take a look at what doesn't work for me.

• The Look: You know the look. One part sneer, one part pursed lips, one angrily pointed finger [optional], and a look of Medusa-like instantaneous death upon anyone who gazes upon you. The look works for some of my friends, but it does not work on my kids.
• Raised Voice: The tone of my voice has no bearing whatsoever on the actions of my children. One would think that the level of attentiveness shown by my children would increase with the loudness and pitch of my voice, but one would be mistaken. They just raise their voices in reply to drown me out. Since I abhor loudness I gave this one up a while back.
• Sarcasm: For those of you who know me you know that I'm good at it. Totally wasted on my kids. I think it is an age thing. I'll put the sarcasm in my back pocket and bust it out when they are teenagers. For now I choose to not throw my proverbial pearls of sarcastic wisdom before swine.

Let us now take a look at my children individually. Antonio thinks that the word "No" is the first part of the new word "Nogotiable" (formed by combining the words No and Negotiable). Ever the salesman Antonio is quite adept at overcoming objections. For him "No" is just the beginning as he steps into Monty Hall's shoes and says "Let's Make a Deal." On countless occasions he has been able to weasel his way out of punishment because his retort to NO is so hilarious that Misty and I have trouble keeping a straight face. A few days ago we told him to stop playing around at the dinner table and eat. In true Italian response he shot both hands out in front if him and began to shake them to stress his point and said "I don't like that deal but I will take three more bites and then you will give me dessert." Yesterday we asked him to stop doing something and his retort amounted to "Well how about I do this and you just leave me alone. Okay? Okay!" Needless to say the parents often have more than a little trouble holding it together. I can't tell if this kid is going to grow up to be an attorney or a salesman but at the very least he will be a lot of fun to take to the flea market, because this kid haggles about everything.

Angelo on the other hand thinks that No simply means "No, until you look the other way." It's like talking to a brick wall sometimes. We tell him to stop doing something and he pauses...only to return to it 30 seconds later. Then when you catch him doing it again and reprimand him he turns on the puppy dog eyes and starts to tear up and then claims that he "no longer likes Mommy/Daddy because we are mean to him." Or sometimes when you catch him in the act of doing something verboten he looks at you as if to say "Oh you were serious about that? Had I but known that you really wanted me to stop I would have given it some serious thought." Not that he actually would have stopped but he would have seriously considered it. In either instance the intended result is far from the actual.

I love my children dearly and I have seen glimpses of Antonio trying to be a better listener and applying what we say (which I'm certain comes with age and maturity). Angelo is not quite there yet, but I am hopeful that he will follow in his brother's footsteps since we plan to shower Antonio with praise and lavish rewards once he is able to moderate his own actions/responses. I ask for your prayers for our sanity during this time of childish irrationality and we are hopeful that if our friends with 3 children (or more) can make it through this phase that so can we.

Summer Is Here - Oh Crap!

Parting is such sweet sorrow. Never has that been more true than today when we bid adieu to preschool. It is with great sadness that we close the book on yet another school year for the boys. Gone is the dependability of scheduling important conference calls on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Gone are the days that Misty can be certain she will be grocery shopping with only 1/3 of the trifecta. Gone are the dependable recovery days in which we could seek respite from the previous day's insanity.

Summer arrives this year with impeccable timing. This morning Antonio and Angelo woke up at sunrise...and it gets earlier every day. My loving children were up around 6AM this morning. In itself not a bad thing, however at approximately 6:15 AM the bickering and fighting began. I have a hard time handling these kids when I am well prepared for them let alone early in the morning. As I am still wiping the sleep from my eyes they begin to wail on one another with whatever is within arm's length. Before I know it they have relocated to the kitchen and begin to serve themselves breakfast. Screams abound as to who gets to grab the bowls, spoons, milk and cereal. Nothing cheery about the Cheerios this morning. My one redemption was the knowledge that the kids had school today. But alas no longer...

Summer camp aboard the International Space Station not withstanding we are at a loss as to how we will manage these hoodlums for the next few months. I'm certain that as other families find themselves in similar scenarios that playgroups will abound just to ensure that the kids get their batteries drained and their mothers stay sane. In the meantime I will be the guy cowering in his home office refusing to come out save for the occasional meal (how awesome is the in-office bathroom now?). I am currently plotting an alternate escape route that will eschew the inevitable carnage that awaits me downstairs. Best idea thus far involves a window escape via rope ladder that I can use to exit stage left, scale down the house and bear crawl to my car with any luck unnoticed. Hey, a guy can dream can't he?

Have a great Summer!

Parental Assessment - Gains/Losses

Now that we have 3 children I am taking an assessment of what we have gained and lost. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I'm sure over time more can and will be added. The entries that made the short list of gains/losses are:

Gained:

• Three boys who look similar and act completely differently.
• A firm grasp of the mother's curse. I actually ended up with three boys just like me. FYI the mother's curse is very real. I now understand why I thought my parents were constantly on the verge of going crazy...I thought it was just an expression but it REALLY WAS my fault!
• A deep respect for those with more children. I honestly don't know how they do it. I am ready to waive the white flag and take a vow of chastity. Plenty of time for sex after Misty hits menopause.
  
• A true understanding of how golden silence can be. There is nothing like the 5 minute respite that follows bedtime.
  
• A sense of wonder that children live to become adults. If we didn't love our children there is a large probability that we would forgo the continuation of the species and live comfortably with a pair of Golden Retrievers.
• A comfy pair of flip flops that I wear around the house to avoid stepping on sharp-cornered objects like Matchbox cars and Playmobil pieces. I used to go barefoot but have learned my lesson after what I will call "unintended acupuncture." Hello tetanus shot!
  
• A pair of toy boxes and multiple toy bins to house the aforementioned sharp-cornered items. My kids' toys have more storage than a 747.
• A minivan. Say what you will about the old daddy wagon but there is no way we could cram three kids into an Accord (at least not if both parents wanted to ride in the car simultaneously) nor is there any way I could afford to gas up a mammoth SUV. Ample seating + gas mileage = minivan, no way around it.
  

Lost:

• Hair...a lot of it.
• Hair Color (Applies to Misty only)...my hair that would have gone gray simply fell out.
• Patience. Maybe I had more of it when I only had one child nipping at my heels, but now my concept of patience has changed drastically. My patience now extends to the length of my arm plus a wooden spoon.
• Timeliness. I was always a person who was on time, and if I wasn't on time I was early. Now I consider it a good day if I am + 30 minutes from the desired ETA. (Note the absence of +/-...minus doesn't ever happen).
• There are many things that we go without to provide for our children. I personally gave up on athleticism, a low handicap and reason. Misty chipped in her sanity. Together we make quite a pair. Now our toughest decision is Mojito or Sangria? (After bedtime of course)!
  
• Cleanliness. I used to be fanatical about cleaning up all the toys at the end of the day and before the kids went to bed. Now I am more than content to run the gauntlet and slalom my way through the toys on the way to my office in the morning. It is as close to skiing as I will get until for at least the next 5 years.
  
• Notion of "Free Time." Free time is noted only as the time I can squeeze in between all things that need to be done (laundry, dishes, making the boys' lunches for the next day, cleaning up the messes left behind, etc.). Basically there ain't a whole lot of it.

It is called the daily grind for a reason. If you cannot relate you should definitely come over and baby sit to gain a deeper personal understanding of our daily grind.

What Does It Mean To Be A Child?

Today I was thinking about my children during an all too infrequent quiet moment and I asked myself what it meant to be a child. Clearly being young is a key ingredient but there are many young people who are quite intelligent: cross that one off. Some might characterize it by a lack of responsibility although I know many adults (not the least of which are my unmarried friends) to whom I could apply that logic, so that cannot be the answer. After all of my metacognitive searching I have boiled it down to one thing. Imagination.

To be small and to think big is a hallmark of being a child. Children have a knack for turning a cardboard box into a castle, a belt into a lasso, an empty roll of paper towels into a telescope, and a broken stick into a sword. Children can watch a movie and become a character: blankets become capes and stuffed animals come alive. They are captivated by magical stories, they believe that anything is possible which is a trait they share with inventors and visionaries the world over. Our world is ruled by those who seek to make our tiny planet more than what it was and have the ability to see the future and what can be. This is why imagination is so critical to progress. I think the following quote from George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman explains it best:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Somewhere along the way as we become adults we grow big and think small. This probably happens gradually, but certainly when we have children of our own we begin to think less about grandeur and more about the basics of providing for our families. How ironic that the imagination we outgrew long ago is our key to connecting with our children. Children need discipline, but they need to be encouraged to expand their imaginations and these two need not be diametrically opposed. Discipline is needed at certain times, but not at all times. Children must be free at times to run wild, skin their knees, and bust their lips. They must be allowed to grow through trial and error. We cannot teach them everything (nor would I want to). Some things they must experience for themselves.

It should be the primary concern of parents to strive for the delicate balance between discipline and imagination. If a parent is too overbearing the children will be coerced or scared into doing what is right and once they leave the nest they will surely rebel. No one likes to be micromanaged...least of all children. Yet on the other hand to allow children to do whatever they want to do is not a form of parenting, it is actually quite the opposite and a total abdication of parental responsibilites. If a parent is too lax then the children will show no respect to the parents (or others for that matter) since children need structure to grow into well-formed adults. To borrow a phrase from Suze Orman we as parents need to be willing to say, "No out of love instead of yes out of fear."

An old adage states that "everything is good in moderation including moderation." We should apply this to parenting as well. I believe that we can and should educate our children in the ways of the world, but let us not forget to allow them time to be children. My kids won't be applying to colleges for at least another dozen years so I think we have ample time to let them frolic and not obsess over learning too much too soon. Childhood does not last forever so we should enjoy as much of their young lives as we can before they grow into adults themselves.