Stoic Saturday: Focus On The Task at Hand

It is possible to become a parent without intending to, but you shouldn’t parent your kids without intention. Even if you stumbled into the role, felt unprepared and overwhelmed (what parent hasn’t?), once the responsibility of the position is yours – act accordingly. Marcus Aurelius says this:

Concentrate like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life

The concentration habits or Romans was something they never covered in history class, but I don’t think he is talking about the average citizen here. I think he is talking about the ideal kind of person you should strive to be, and the step to take toward being that person by being living in the moment.

Being told to “live in the moment” has almost become cliche, but I think it goes one step further from having an awareness of the moment you’re living right now. It calls you to be a participant in the moment you’re living right now. It isn’t talking about appreciating what is in front of you, it’s talking about doing what it in front of you. I know this is a challenge for me. Do I sit on the couch and watch my kids play while my mind is somewhere else, or should I join them and be an active participant in their development?

Does having three kids actually make it harder to give enough attention to each one, or is that just an excuse for not concentrating on each of of kids completely in the moment they need me? Devoting one-on-one time to each is important. They need to know they have my attention without distraction from their siblings, or my phone, or the TV, or whatever needs to get done around the house. There are times for those, but if I am doing something with my kid, then I need to be free from other distractions.

I think the word choice is important here – “Freeing yourself from all other distractions.” Not minimizing distractions, not blocking out distractions, but freeing yourself from them. Distractions hold you back. They are not just an inconvenience, they are just background noise, but rather they are genuinely harmful. Time with my kids should be time with my kids. Anything else that is important can have it’s own time, and anything that isn’t important doesn’t deserve my time. There will never be a shortage of things competing for my attention, three kids pretty much guarantees that, so I need to be aware of what is competing for my attention and be quick to decide who gets none of it.

I find it interesting that he says to concentrate not just precisely and seriously, but tenderly and willingly. It is not like were are trying to do math homework and need to shut up and focus so we can begrudgingly buckle down and get it done, but we are to care about what we are doing. Whatever it is we are focusing on is something that we have chosen to spend a chuck of time our of our lives on, the least we can do is do it on purpose and with care. When your kid asks you to read the same book for the 100th time, do you do it willingly? When your kid misbehaves and needs to be taught a lesson on why you don’t play with nail polish (not that that has ever happened to me….) do you do it tenderly? It is not enough for your head to be present, your heart needs to be invested too.

And how differently would you do things if you did them as if it was the last thing you did in life? Would you be so quick tempered at your kids for not having their shoes when it’s time to go? If getting your kids ready to leave for school in the morning was the last thing you’d do in life, I bet it wouldn’t matter so much that a kid can’t find one shoe. You would probably take a moment to appreciate how the kid who can now zip up their jacket all on their own has learned and grown. And you’d take an extra minute to help teach the kid who can’t. If a game of CandyLand was the last think you ever did, would you have one eye on something else while playing? Would you stack the deck to try to get it over as fast as possible? Probably not. And doing a disservice to a game of CandyLand certainly isn’t doing it with justice.

Is it realistically possible to bring this level of focus and intentionality to everything you do? Maybe, maybe not. I wonder, how does one change a diaper with seriousness, tenderly, willingly, and with justice? Tenderly, sure. With seriousness, okay. Willingly? I suppose if I did as if it was the last thing I did in life, I would leave my son the the cleanest butt the world has ever seen.

Today’s takeaway – purposely eliminate distractions and focus on what I’m doing (even diapers) as if it is the most important thing I’ll do. Because in that exact moment, it is.

I Can’t Protect My Kids From Stairs

A significant portion of being a parent to little kids is trying to stop them from hurting themselves. I make sure they don’t pinch their fingers in drawers or bang their heads on tables. What feels like a hundred times a day I tell them to be careful. I remind them of what happened to all those monkeys that jumped on their bed. I think I do a pretty good job making sure my kids don’t flop around the house with complete disregard for their personal safety, and for my efforts all three of my kids have fallen down the stairs.

Before you ask – yes, we have a baby gate and it is almost always up. It was actually up when my one year-old feel down and gave me the neglectful parent hat trick. To be fair, he has the physical make up a fire hydrant. The baby gate was no match for his mass. He sat down on the floor with his back to the gate, leaned back, and down he went. At least this is what I pieced together in the Fall Scene Investigation, because of course it happened when I left the room for one freaking minute.

I climbed over the baby gate to go down stairs to move a load of laundry from the washer to the drier, and bring what was in the drier up to be folded. No good deed goes unpunished, right? It took me no time at all, and as I was approaching the bottom of the stairs, I heard it. The snap of the baby gate giving way, the bang of the gate as it hit the stairs, the thud and the wail of the baby that followed.

I threw down the laundry, leapt up the stairs, dodged the falling gate, and got to the little fella as he laid on his back three steps from the top. Three steps, not bad. Could have been worse. When my middle daughter was about his age, maybe a little older, her tumble down the stairs made both her lip bleed and me feel like the worst parent in the world. So I can live with three stairs and no blood.

Although, she fell down the stairs because she was trying to climb up them. I have no idea how high up she made it before tumbling down, because – shocker – I wasn’t there. I had to run upstairs to take a work call. How’s that for some guilt? I choose work over my kids and one of them immediately falls down the stairs. I put her older sister in charge, but apparently she was really slacking on her literal only job of keeping her sister away from the stairs. Free tip – never put a three year-old in charge of anything. While she did nothing to actually prevent it, she was more than willing to run and tell me that her sister fell down. Thanks kiddo.

What I really find ironic, is that the stairs is pretty much the only thing in the house that we baby proofed. We didn’t put latches on cabinets, or rounded corners on tables. We did an ok job of putting the plastic plugs in the electrical outlets the kids can reach, but they quickly learned how to take them out. If a kid is that determined to zap themself, what are you gonna do? But we did put the baby gate up. And I have climbed over that thing hundreds of times, because I’d rather leave it up than take it down for even just a minute while I run and get something out the basement. And what happens? My bowling ball of a son plows right through it.

I get that you can’t protect your kids from everything, but is it too much to ask to actually protect them from the thing you are protecting them from? I suppose the bright side of this is that they are all fine, and few bruises and bloody lips never really hurt anybody. And it doesn’t make me a bad parent. Does it? No, it doesn’t. But does it? Is the fault in the act, or in the result? I’ve always been a firm believer in “no harm, no foul,” and I think it applies here.

Though I am sure it will burn in their memories and stick with them forever. Nobody carries a mildly traumatic experience with them like a little kid. When my oldest daughter was still learning how to run, she tripped, fell, and scraped her knee while we were out for walk. For the two years since that happened, every single time we walk past the spot where she fell she reminds us how she fell there. Sometimes forgets that she is already wearing underwear when she goes to put a new pair on, but she always remembers the exact spot on the sidewalk where she bit it.

I hope that stairs are just my Achilles heel and this isn’t the start of what will be an ongoing trend. Does it start with falling down the stairs on my watch and escalate from here? Just to be safe, I’ll keep them away from escalators. Moving stairs is just asking for trouble.

Welcome to Stoic Saturday

Welcome to the first in a series of discussions on philosophy! Exactly what you expect in a fatherhood blog, right? Well, I didn’t pick the name for this blog because it was catchy. My intention with this series is take some time to step back from the day to day of being a Dad, and take some actual time to think. Specifically, I’ll be talking about how the Stoic philosophy can help me become a better Dad. 

Make no mistake, I am not a philosophy teacher. The same way I don’t claim to be a parenting exert, I am not an expert on Stoicism. I am here to learn, not to teach. About a year and a half ago I started reading “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. As I went, I underlined parts of the book that stood out. My plan is walk though those sections and think about them though the lens of a parent, and see what nugget of wisdom is in there to help me be a better Dad. 

“There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return”

The cliches about time flying gloss over the very import fact that it is absolutely true. When you look at your kids and they suddenly aren’t babies anymore, it is easy to say something about how you blinked and they grew rather than take a look at how the time that is now gone was actually spent. Did it fly by because you weren’t living in that moment with intention? Did it fly because you were trying to do a hundred things and once, but none of the one thing you should have been doing in that moment? Maybe it flew by because you just weren’t paying attention.

Time is limited. Nobody lives forever, we know that. Frustratingly, just how much time we get on this planet is completely out of our control. A difficult thing to do is balance the idea that death it not something to be feared, but just a natural action. To the Stoic, something that is in accordance with the true nature of things can’t be bad, therefore death is not a bad thing. But I find that the fear of death is often what motivates the living to make the most of the moment and to fully live their lives. Then again, are the people using fear as their motivation for living using that time to free and grow themselves, or are they actually trapped by fear? The YOLO lifestyle may make for good Instagramming, but does it make for a good life?

So if we don’t fear death, then our motivation to use our time isn’t to cram as much living into that time, but to truly use that time to better ourselves. If I know I only have a set amount of time with my kids, am I going to try to take them to every park, play every game, color every picture? Or am I going to slow down and try to do less in that time? It feels contradictory, but doing less with more intention could actually be the better way to use your time. I almost typed “fill your time” there, but I don’t want to “fill” my time. I can fill my time with my kids by watching Frozen for the 52nd time. I want to use my time.

What then does it mean to “free yourself?” This is more than just freeing up more time, we already know that more time isn’t guaranteed to anybody. You could free up your calendar for next month and get hit by a car tomorrow. We need to free ourselves from noise, distractions, things that go againts the virtues we are trying to pursue. Wouldn’t you love to be able to spend some of your time sitting in the quiet, having time to think and reflect? Time that you can use to grow? Time where you don’t have texts or emails to think about. Time that you don’t have meetings or appointments. To kick off Stoic Saturday, I set my alarm for 5:50 am. That is about a half hour earlier than I set it for on a workday. Why? Because I wanted to be able to sit in stillness and quiet to write this. In a house with three kids under five, before sunrise is the best option to get quiet. Have I achieved freedom at 5:50 in the morning? No, but I think I’ve made a step in the right direction.

It is easy to fall into the pattern of spending time with my kids by just doing the things – get them fed, get them dressed, get them clean, get them to bed. Of course these things need to happen, there is no way around it. But am I just moving from one thing to next? Are snacks and diapers the kid version of texts and emails? I should be careful not to confuse using time to accomplish the baseline parental tasks with spending quality time with my kids. Recognize the difference between activity and productivity. Quantity and quality. Will my kids remember the time I efficiently got them fed and out the door for school in time? Probably not. Will they remember how I asked them about their day and actually listened? I sure hope so.

There is good, there is bad, there is indifferent. Spend time pursuing the good, spend time avoiding the bad, don’t waste time on the indifferent. By investing time – time alone or with my kids – in pursuing the good, you will achieve freedom, and truly be making the most of your time. What would I do with my kids if my time wasn’t pulled away by things that don’t matter – either out of habit, or worse, by conscious choice?

Today’s takeaway – choose to use time on the good, on the virtuous. Make an effort to realize my choices in how I spend my time, and change habits that’s waste time.

My kids are awake now. My quiet stillness has been promptly replaced by a baby the needs a clean diaper and full belly, and two sisters who already need to be kept apart from each other. Each one taking their turn to cry. Such is life. But while the quiet may be gone around me, the stillness can still carry on inside.

The Greatest Heroes in American History – Parents of the Oregon Trail

There is perhaps no more dreaded part of a parent’s life than spending an extended period of time in a car with your kids. Even if you tailor the entire experience around their enjoyment, the best you can hope for is that it isn’t terrible. Don’t you dare hope for actual enjoyment. If you plan your drive time around naps, meals, and bathrooms breaks, pack plenty of books, toys, and snacks, and even if you let them pick what to listen to on the radio – the odds of reaching your destination without issue are not great.

On a recent trip to my in-laws (a normal 2.5 hour drive across Michigan), the drive became a mix of closed lanes, bathroom breaks, and tears, many tears, that stretched to over 3 hours. My three kids each took their turn, tagging in and out along the way to make sure there was at least one kid crying at all times. It was easily the worst care ride we’ve ever had with them. I should say that for the most part my kids do very well in the car, and hopefully this trip will prove to be an abnormality and not a new trend. I credit part of their car ride track record to the fact that I’ve refused to let them watch anything. They get no screens in the car. I have no great reason for this other than the fact that I didn’t have anything like that when I was a kid, and I did just fine. Kids today have it so easy, amiright? While modern convenience has made travel easier for kids, the biggest beneficiaries have been the parents.

When I was little, we loaded up the Dodge Caravan and drove to Florida. It look 3 days. Our only source of entertainment was a box of books and games my Mom packed and whatever was going on outside my window. Spoilers – trees! God have mercy on my parents.

Every advancement in child’s mobile entertainment and comfort has also advanced the sanity of parents. We’ve never had it so good. Which got me thinking about parents of olde, and the fact that the greatest heroes in the history of America are the parents of the Oregon Trail. I mean, sure, the men who stormed the beach at Normandy are up there. But how many times did somebody ask them for a snack, but not that snack, something else?

There was an estimated 40,000 kids who made the great trip West. There was an estimated 7,543,345,123 utterances of “We’ll get there when we get there.” The average trek took 5-6 months. That’s over 150 days. As entertaining as ball-on-a-string-on-a-cup and stick and hoop are, those parents never stood a chance.The amount of a times a snack would be asked for and denied boggles the mind. “If you eat all the hard tack now, we won’t have any for later!” How many siblings were poking the other one? Talking to the other one? Heaven forbid, looking at the other one?

Though I suppose the bright side is that they probably didn’t have too much time to be bored with all the walking to do. That’s right. Riding in the wagon was for if you were sick or hurt, otherwise kids walked. The only thing more pleasant than a tired, hungry child is a tired, hungry child with blisters on their feet. I’ve had my kids complain that Crocs made their feet hurt. They never would have made it out Missouri.

So now that the kids are hungry, tired, and cranky, let’s get them to do chores! Common tasks for kids included herding animals, fetching water, gathering firewood, and collecting buffalo chips. I have a hard enough time getting my kids to pick up stuffed animals off of their bedroom floor, and these parents had to get their kids to pick up animal doo-doo.

But hey, it wasn’t all fun, games, and feces for parents. They also had the base line task of just keeping kids alive. If the video game taught me anything, it’s that you will die of dysentery. I mean, with all the buffalo chip collecting kids were doing, it was a matter of when you’d get diarrhea and vomiting, not if. I got super annoyed when we had to get off the highway so my daughter could stop to pee in a Walmart. Can you even imagine the bathroom breaks involved with dysentery. “We just stopped so you could go back at the big pine tree, we’re not stopping again! You’ll just need to hold it until we get to that big rock or we’ll never get to Oregon!”

Not to mention the deadliness of the mundane. About as many people died from being run over by a wagon that died from scurvy or freezing to death. How many blankies do your kids insist on bringing in the car ride? Kids today, with their ample amounts of vitamin C and protection of exposure.

So while 3 hours in a minivan with little people who want more fruit snacks was not the most fun I’ve ever had, nobody got typhoid, and I’m grateful for that.

Western expansion is often overly romanticized, and a great many sins are glossed over in the name of going west young man. However, it did produce the greatest American heroes – parents who managed to get small people from once place to another without the aid of a screen, or juice boxes, or books, or Raffi, or anything. Anything at all. Other than the ever-present threat of death and disease. Maybe on our next car trip I’ll give my kids a ball-on-a-string-on-a-cup and tell them to deal with it. Either that or a super soft and comfy pair of jammies so they fall asleep in their air-conditioned car seat. Could go either way.

What My Daughter Hears Me Say

My little girl was sitting at the table eating her lunch, when she looked at me and said, “Dad, do you know what you say all the time?” I was curious and nervous. In the mind of the three year-old, what it is that I say that sticks in her mind?

Best case would be something adorable like “I love you.” What better to know that I say it enough to her that she knows it. If that is so engrained in her little mind that Daddy says “I love you” that it has become my cliche catch phrase, surely I am at least doing one thing right as a parent. And as far as catch phrases go, it’s no “How you doin’,” but it’s certainly better than “Did I do that?”

Or would it be a term of endearment? Most of the time I call my daughter Peanut, so would she say that? Every kid needs a good nickname, and the best ones carry into adulthood. She may outgrow it at some point. Will I call her Peanut when she’s in her 30’s or has kids of her own? Maybe not. But will I can her Peanut when she’s a teenager and calling her that in front of her friends will embarrass the crap out of her? You bet your ass.

A few worst case scenario words flashed across my mind as well. I really try not to swear in front of my kinds, but they’ve been around me while I’m trying fix things around the house or assemble their toys so I can’t make any promises as to what they’ve heard.

Or would it be some word that I say all the time without even realizing it? Some nervous tick of a word that works its way into my speech. I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to not say “um” or “like”, but has something else taken their place? Like, uh, some kind of word like “you see” or “anywho?”

Perhaps it would be some reflection of my habits, either good or bad. Would it be something like “baseball” or “exercise”? There is honestly a higher probability it would be “beer” or “cake”.

“What do I say?” I asked her as she chewed.

I was glad she wasn’t talking with her mouth full, but her delay in response left me hanging. I need to know what lasting impressions I am making on my kids. How have my words shaped their growing minds? Who am I in their eyes? Chew tiny lady, chew!

I hoped for the best yet braced for the worst, fairly certain that either way it would be adorable.

She finished chewing her bite, looked up at me and said –

“Bing.”

Is My Kid a Bad Influence? Yeah, Probably.

Try as we might, we cannot completely shelter our kids from negative outside influence. They will learn bad words, they will pick up bad habids, and God help us they might even listen to Cardi B. It is clear that my daugher has picked things up at pre-school and brought them home.

For the most part the trend has been increased levels of sass and eye rolls. What used to be a simple “yes” has become a “yeeEEs”. And never at an appropriate time to use sass. Its not like she implements this when repeating the same question about whether or not she’s picked up her toys, she hits me with the sass when I ask her if she wants milk with dinner. Clearly, she picked up this new and exciting response at school and can’t wait to use it, context be damned.

She has also said that things that I know she has never seen or heard are her favorite. Yesterday she said to me, “Dad, JoJo Siwa is my favorite person.” After a Google search to find out who the hell JoJo Siwa is, I concluded that, no. No she is not. More likely that she heard somebody at school with an older brother or sister talk about it and decided that she wanted to be able to talk it too. This is the pre-school version of nodding and smiling in a work meeting when people start throwing around acronyms that you don’t know what they mean. Her JoJo Siwa is my JSON. My only understanding of their existence is that the seemingly random collection of letters that make up there name have made their way onto my computer.

It has been said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If the behavior of five other kids is osmosing into my daughter, I wonder what of my daughter is showing up in them? What odd new thing is being chalked up the influence of Lucy K.? As much as I don’t want it to be, I assume it is taking off their pants when they shouldn’t be taking off their pants.

Twice in the last month my wife has gotten a call from the school letting her know that our daughter was being inappropriate. One was a classic game of showing yours and mine, which my natural dad reaction is that I’m sure it wasn’t my daughter that started it but the other little son of a bitch. The other was her dropping trou to scratch an itch during nap time. Not much I can say about that one. I mean, I am all for comfort when you’re trying to sleep, but c’mon kid.

We are always given an assurance that it is no big deal and normal, but at the end of the day my kid is the kid who showed the class her business. Much like the kid who has to do the same grade twice, every class has one, but you never think it will your kid. I imagine one of her classmates going home and letting it hang out at the dinner table and giving the excuse of “Lucy K. does it.” And word gets around. Just like that, she’s got a bad name. She’s not invited to birthday parties, she’s left out of play dates, she doesn’t get to sit at the kids-who-keep-their-pants-on table lunch. That Lucy K., she’s a bad seed. But I ask you what is worse – influencing other kids to take off their pants, or have an awareness of JoJo Siwa? Taking your pants off and listening to some 90’s Whitney Houston (which is some of my daughter’s favorite music) sounds a lot better than wearing all your pants and listening to some fad garbage that’s YouTube famous. I might just go take my pants off and listen to The Bodyguard soundtrack right now.

I am sure some good of these kids is rubbing off on each other too. There are moments when my kids do something so kind and responsible I am amazed. And I take total credit for it. It could be something they picked up from a friend though. Helping somebody else get their shoes on and when not to display your parts – the two most important lessons of pre-school.

Dad Isn’t Pretty

Evie, my two year-old daughter, dropped some truth on me the other day. She was looking at us the bathroom mirror as we were washing her hands, and she said to me, “Dad, you’re not pretty.”

At first I was insulted. I’ve been called a lot of things, but but “not pretty” has never been one of them. I mean, it’s not like I’m Rob Lowe circa 1986, but to be flat out called not pretty? Ouch.

A very pretty man.

Then I thought it must be because I’m a boy. This is a girl who says that her baby brother can’t be a sweetie because he’s a boy, and sweeties are girls. So I ask “Oh, is it because I’m handsome?” Solid logic. Pretty = girl, handsome = boy, right?

“No.”

Well now she’s just being a dick.

“Because you don’t have a jammie dress.” She justified.

I felt better. It’s not that she thinks I’m ugly, but finds my pajamas unsightly. Which, in her defense, consist of old shirts or sweatshirts two sizes too big and a pair of shorts. So compared to her adorable little night gowns, yes, I am dressed like a hobo. It is very clear that I do not measure up to her young idea of beauty.

Beautiful is pink. Beautiful is sparkly. Beautiful is painted toenails. Dad is a constant state of 5 o’clock shadow. The princess is the epitome of pretty. The prince is some schlub on a horse.

I had taken pandemic hair seriously. I went a year without a haircut, and when I suddenly came home once day with 8 less inches of hair she didn’t take it well. My wife was pleased. My older daughter laughed. My baby boy paid no mind. Evie was disgusted by my shorn appearance. At the time I thought it was just a shock for her. I went more than a third of her life without a haircut, so I was just glad she recognized me. But now I realize that my long hair was the only thing about me that aligned with her concept of beauty. It could go in a ponytail, it could go in a bun, it downright flowed. She says my hair used to be “floppy,” which apparently is what she thinks hair ought to be.

She asks me at least once a week when my hair will grow back, and why is it taking so long. Sadly for her (and me if I’m being honest) my long hair has had its last hurrah. I will never again be pretty in the eyes of my daughter. Although, I suppose I could start wearing a night gown. I could totally pull off that look. Probably would be super comfortable. Breezy in all the right places. She doesn’t have a monopoly on adorable sleepwear. I’ll show her who’s not pretty!

Kids and Cups: A Match Made In Hell

Before you had kids, advice is everywhere. Some of it you search out, and some of it is thrust upon you. Everybody has thoughts on things like breast feeding, the safest car seat, using a pacifier, if/when/how often you should hit your kid. However, there is one area of parenting on which nobody offered me advice, and I certainly wouldn’t have thought to seek out on my own, which has come to rear its ugly head. Plates and cups.

The amount of advice on what kids use to eat and drink greatly decreases as they grow. There are volumes of information on which bottle you should use and why. There are ample product reviews on different kinds of sippy cups. But regular cups? By the time a kid is old enough to drink from a normal cup and eat off of a normal plate, they are all the same, right? Anybody who believes that has clearly never given an orange cup to three year-old who wanted a blue one. Hell hath no fury.

While I don’t intend for this to be a place to come to for advice, I can’t help but provide some of the knowledge I wish I would have been told before I thought “hey, let’s get this Mickey Mouse cup!”

Fiesta Ware Is Not For Kids

When my wife and I picked out our silverware and dishes for our wedding registry, we wanted to go with something that wouldn’t be plain. Who wants to eat a burrito off of a boring white plate? Not us. We opted for the kaleidoscope that is Fiesta. Our table popped with blues, greens, reds, and oranges mixed and matched together to create a treat for the eyes while I got down on treats for my tum tum. As newlyweds, we weren’t considering our hypothetical future children when were chose these. Such fools we were.

Once we had kids and those kids got old enough to eat off plates, setting the table became a guessing game that nobody wins. Give them a green plate, they want a red one. Let them pick their plate, you’ve set yourself off on a slippery slope that leads to two kids crying over the last clean blue plate. God help you if the dishwasher is in the middle of a cycle and both kids want blue plates. A few days ago I made the grievous error of accidentally giving the wrong plate to the wrong kid, and then switching them after they already sat down to eat. One cried because the other had gotten their plate, the other cried because I took the plate they never knew they always wanted and gave it to her sister.

We have now implemented a policy of “You Get What You Get and You Don’t Throw a Fit.” Now instead of riding the rollercoaster of either getting their favorite plate or throwing a fit when they don’t, they now experience a constant state of disappointment. It makes it easier to give them food and it teaches them an important life lesson. Double bonus.

If having kids is something you’re considering on any level, do your future self a favor and pick the plainest plate and the most basic cup you can find, then buy 20 of each. Also, if you get multiple sizes, you’re just asking for it.

You Must Call a Plate a Plate

Watching kids grasp the English language is equal parts fun and frustrating. The broken English of baby talk is adorable. The mispronunciation of words inevitably works its way into your everyday vocabulary and replaces the actual versions of those words. We don’t ask for more in our house, we ask for moy. However, once the language is firmly grasped children become the worst possible versions of high school writing teachers. I fear the day my kids learn whom, but for now their overly strict correction is focused on when you accidentally call their bowl a plate.

“Take your plate to sink,” is said so often in my house I fear my baby son might think it’s his name. At this point it’s a reflex. Its rolls right off the tongue without thought of what actual food vessel they are using. If you ever want to be talked down to buy somebody who can’t be trusted to wipe their own butt, ask them to take their plate to the sink when they were using a bowl. Or ask them to take their bowl to the sink when they’re using a snack cup.

Gonna sass my word choice about your snack cup? It’s actually a ramekin you smart shit how about that?

Kids Can’t See Cups

The supreme irony of a child demanding a specific size, shape, and color of cup is that once it is filled with liquid and set down in front of them it immediately falls into a cup shaped blind spot. If something they want is on the other side of their cup, that cup – and its very likely sticky contents – are getting blasted all over the kitchen like its the end of American Beauty.

Reaching for a napkin? Milk is going down. Grabbing a fork? Water on the floor. Trying to pick up the juice? Goodbye juice. It might not be the best parenting, but I often forget to give my kids something to drink with dinner. But you know what? They don’t notice. For all they know there is a full glass of chocolate milk sitting right in front of them, yet squarely in their blind spot.

Would owning only one kind of plate and one kind of cup be boring? Yes. Would it be the best parental decision you ever made? Absolutely.

The Luigi Complex: A Younger Sibling’s Struggle

Listening to my daughters play pretend, there is an obvious trend – the older one dictates the action. She decides what will be played, who says what, and how they will say it. When roles are handed out, she’s always the lead. Playing school – she’s the teacher. Playing family – she’s the Mom. Which is fine. But I overheard something that was a crystal clear signal that the age-old dynamics between older and younger siblings is alive and well in my kids.

“I’ll be Esmeralda,” my 4 year-old said. “You be Quasimodo,” she told her younger sister.

Classic older sibling. I’ll be the beautiful lady who sings songs and dances. You be the malformed side-show freak. I guess at least she didn’t make herself Frollo, but it still struck a chord that forever rings true in the lives of second-born. They are forever destined to be second-fiddle, or Luigi if you will.

Player Two: Luigi’s Destiny

My oldest was looking over my shoulder as I found this image. “That’s Carter’s favorite!” she said. “Luigi?” I asked. “No, wait. Mario.” she said, perfectly illustrating my point.

While sibling interactions date back to the early pages of the Bible, for people of my generation who grew up in the area of original Nintendo there is no great representation of the struggle of the second born than Luigi. Older siblings were always Player One, which means they were always Mario. Younger siblings, such as myself were Player Two, and by default, Luigi. In the first Super Mario Brothers, this didn’t actually make much of a difference other than the colors of the characters, but as the games evolved and characters were given different attributes Mario was always the best. Older siblings may have tried to make the case that Luigi wasn’t worse, he just had different skills. But we knew what was up. Mario was always the best all-around character. Luigi having slightly better speed was no condolence. Mario was on the cover. It was his game, and we were just playing in it.

The path of Player Two can go two directions – one of rebellion, or one of mastery.

When The Younger Sibling Gets a Bad Name

“If I had my second child first, I wouldn’t have wanted a second.” I bet you’ve heard that. A line of propaganda perpetuated by the Marios of the world.

The second-borns of the world often get a bad rap for being more rebellious, more wild, and generally not as well behaved as the first-borns. This is not some in-born trait of the second-borns, but a natural reaction to being pigeonholed into the role of Luigi.

“You get to be Mario again? How about I just unplug the game?”

“Oh you you want to be the blue guy in Candy Land? How about I flip over the board?”

The little siblings of the world who go the route of rebellion don’t know how to get out of the no-win position of being Player Two. Do they stay Player Two forever? Do they subject themselves to begging to be Player One in hopes the older sibling graces them with the good fortune of allowing it? Nobody wants to be a patronized Mario. So they either lash out – and get blamed for not playing nice. Or they cry, and are reinforce that they are the younger one, cementing even further their Player Two destiny. A rebellious younger sibling is not a bad kid. They just don’t want to be freaking Luigi.

Take Your Mario And Shove It

The other route a younger sibling can go is take Luigi all the way to Princess. If they are going to get a worse character, they must become a better player. They must not only embrace the second-billing they are given, but use their role to entirely steal the show. This is result of the Luigi Complex is what I call the Ribisi Effect. Nobody uses his supporting roles to the steal the scene like Giovanni Ribisi. Don’t know who that is? Exactly. He’s not the star, but he shows them up. Every. Single. Time. You paid to come see Tom Hanks, but you’ll leave remembering Ribisi.

The Ribisi Effect is what drives younger siblings to greatness. Michael Jordan has two older brothers and an older sister. Peyton Manning grew up trying to be better than Cooper. Bill Gates has an older sister. I bet even today, if they played a video game on a system he is responsible for, she wouldn’t let him be Player One.

The Luigi Complex doesn’t end with the second-born. It is also responsible for much of how the baby of the family is treated. After seeing what happened with their second child, parents become more determined not to have their other children by type cast as Player Twos, so the babies of the family grow up being able to be Yoshi, or Toad, or m’lady Peach, or whoever the hell want. Then of course older ones turn around and say “Oh you let the baby do anything,” and another sibling is put in a no-win situation all because Luigi sucks.

We have a Little Tikes basketball hoop that the girls are kind of learning to shoot at. My oldest tries to shoot from all over the room, throws the ball too hard, and usually misses. Her younger sister stands closer, uses both hands, and lofts in a soft, perfect shot. Atta girl, Luigi. Atta girl.

The Scariest Thing for Children Is The Truth

“Daddy, scare me!” My daughter said and she laid face down on the kitchen floor, already balled up in anticipation of the terror to come. She had just “snuck” up on a fully suspecting me and shouted “ROAR” directly in my ear, so now it was my turn to return the favor. But in that moment it struck me how lame this game was.

She says “scare me”, I grab her make some kind of scary grunt, she screams, she giggles, lather, rinse, repeat. Not scary. But what else can I do? Then it occurred to me – tell her everyone she loves will be dead someday.

Too far? Perhaps. Terrifying? Absolutely. And, as far as I know, a completely uncharted parental course. Brutal honesty as a means of frightening your children for fun. Like many great ideas it really toes the line between brilliance and insanity. And maybe in this case child abuse.

Maybe the next time she doesn’t want me to read her a bedtime story but wants one out of my head, I really dig deep and pull out of the recesses. Perhaps a retelling of “The Hills Have Eyes”, “Jaws,” or the electoral college. Absolute nightmare fuel.

Want daddy to sing a song? Let me tell ya about Mack the Knife. I know that song is catchy and always sung by a smoother crooner, but have you ever actually listened to the lyrics? My kids usually ask for “The Rainbow Connection” at bed, but maybe I should switch it up. “Good night sweetie, try not to dream about getting murdered in alley!”

When we are watching movies and somebody dies I always say “oh, they got a boo-boo. I think they might go to heaven.” Maybe I should stop glossing over it. “Yep, Tarzan’s parents were killed and eaten by a wild animal. Same one that ate the gorilla baby don’t ya know. Hey, who wants to go to the zoo?!”

Want to watch a video on daddy’s phone? Hold on while I try to spell Zapruder. Now pay attention kids, it’s back and to the left. Back. And to the left. One shooter? C’mon.

Of course I didn’t do any of those things. I walked up to her all curled up on the floor, paused a moment to build suspense, and tickled her sides and said “ROAR!” She lurched up and then back down, smacked her forehead on the kitchen floor, and started to cry. Next time I’ll just tell her about how they never caught the Zodiac or something.