DadCentric

Laptop-shooting Dad Was Too Soft

For munitions-based parenting, you really need to start young and employ tactics of shock and awe. Like yo:

Why not give this video some love on the YouTube?

Trifling

I never thought it would happen to me; but my kids have arrived at that age. 

They used to call it the "Terrible Twos," but I've read a lot of literature (okay, blogs) arguing that three is worse, and four is even...um, more worse.  In any case, my formerly angelic 2.5-year-old twins have crossed the threshold.  They've always had the capacity to be fussy, of course; but now, with their enhanced cognitive and language skills, they can do so with much greater focus and intention.

Some days are better than others; and even on their worst days, I forgive them by the time they've been asleep for a couple of hours.  I even look forward to seeing them conscious the next day.

But some days are pretty bad, and I must say in all fairness, it's their fault, not mine. 

BREAKING NEWS: Doctors Say Too Much TV Is Bad For Your Kids

 

Because you need another reminder that you're failing miserably as a parent, the American Association of Pediatrics would like to remind you that your kids are probably watching too much TV, and should be outside doing...outside things. (No, watching TV outside does not count.) And the definition of "watching TV" has been expanded; the group lumps in every category of video screen, including video games and computers. Yes, even so-called "educational games". (No, Gears of War 3 is not educational.)

A report released yesterday warns parents that TV has absolutely no benefit for kids under 2; the report recognizes that the number of viewing screen items in an average household has jumped over the past few years, thanks to the increasing number of homes with multiple TV's, computers, smartphones, and tablets. One concern is that parents often leave their TV sets on, either unwittingly or to provide some background noise, and that children can be distracted by OH WHAT A BUNCH OF BULLSHIT, REF! HE STEPPED OUT OF BOUNDS! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Sorry. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. TV. Anyway, you can read an article about it here. On your laptop. That your kid was just using to look at funny cat videos. It's ok. We don't judge.

How Did I Get Out of Mommy's Tummy?

From 4:00 until around 4:30 every afternoon, it's just my 4-year-old daughter and I in the car. When she removes her thumb from her mouth for long enough, we have some fairly interesting conversations!

Today, however, wasn't so much "interesting" as it was "fucking uncomfortable."

Maddie the preschooler:  Daddy, how did I get out of Mommy's tummy when I was just a baby?
Me:  Um.  Well.  You came out through her private...area.
Maddie:  You mean her front bottom? 
Me:  Well.  Yes.  I guess.
Maddie:  That's diss-CUSS-ting!
Me:  I was actually looking at her left shoulder, so that I wouldn't pass out.
Maddie:  Her shoulder? 
Me:  Everything below that area was a bit--as you said--disgusting.  You should've seen the hospital bedsheets afterward!  But people like to say it's beautiful.  These people are, in my estimation, full of poop.
Maddie:  Did it hurt Mommy when I crawled out of her front bottom?
Me:  I think you sort of slid.
Maddie:  I guess it wasn't that bad then, was it?
Me:  Not too bad.  Mommy loves drugs.  I mean.  Mommy loves babies!
Maddie:  Drugs?
Me:  Do you think Arthur will let DW play with his friends today? 
Maddie:  I can't WAIT to get home and watch Arthur!
Me:  Me too.

How My Children Are Using Language to Torment Me

My twin girls are fast approaching age two.  Language is coming at them from everywhere, and sticking like crazy. 

There are people who believe that you can't really think without the facility of language.  I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people.  I heard a guy on the NPR science-y show, Radio Lab, theorize that language acquisition actually creates neural pathways in the learner that would otherwise not be blazed.  I don't know about all that--I guess it seems feasible--but regardless, I can't see how you could really ponder over any matter without words, or some kinds of symbols, to identify all the players, relationships, actions, and contexts in whatever drama you were contemplating.  It seems like you could know things from having experienced them; but you couldn't really work out any problems in your head.  Memory would also be tricky without language.

So as the kids are learning to talk, their thoughts are becoming more organized.  They're applying the knowledge gained from past experiences to their current situations.  They're using some primitive logic and argumentation.

Also, they're revealing what's on their minds.  And let me tell you, almost-two-year-olds think about some deep shit.

Birth Control: Your Balls are in Whose Court?

You know how fond of vasectomies we are here at DadCentric. By "fond of vasectomies," I mean "fond of writing about (and making comic strips of) the horrors and embarrassment of vasectomies."

(I've never detailed here or anywhere else my personal experience with the snip-snip some eight years ago, so here's the Twitter version: "A strange man shaved my boys bald. Later, during the procedure, he failed to use enough anesthesia. I kicked him squarely in the jaw.")

Anyway, I received an e-mail the other day with the subject line: "New Video Shows How Men Can Man-Up When It Comes to Permanent Birth Control." I assumed it to be a plug for a new brand of pain-numbing, memory-wiping tequila to suck down prior to and immediately after getting one's manhood hacked and, hey, no one needs to poke me with a sharp scalpel to get me to take a shot of The Worm Burn, so I took a gander.

Instead I was treated to a pitch for a type of procedure in which a doctor sticks plastic barriers inside "a woman's fallopian tubes through the cervix without incisions" to block the eggs from the incoming sperm ... and 58 seconds of dudes allegedly being all squeamish in reaction to watching a video of other guys getting their sacks permanently sacked:

I am all in favor of advances in medical technology but a few steps forward in marketing strategy would be nice, too. What exactly is the viewer to take away from this? I offer these two suggestions:

1) Hey there, wimpy yet virile man! Avoid a few days of pain and several bags of frozen peas by talking your special lady into this new procedure in which a doctor shoehorns widgets right smack into her baby-making equipment!

Or:

2) Hey there, empowered yet feminine woman! Your man is a wuss when it comes to responsibility, like putting down the toilet seat and birth control. Teach him a lesson by letting us invade your lady parts so we can build the Great Wall of Sperm Deflection! Right on, sister!

All I know is, when decision time came for me I figured my wife did enough in hosting my little swimmers (and its vehicle for delivery) time and time again over the years and, for an encore, she squeezed two bowling balls in two years out of her Box O' Joy. The least I could do was not be a candy-ass and just get the ol' cut and paste in the family jewels for her sake.

But that's just the way I'm cut.

What Are We Gonna Call the Naughty Bits?

We've come to a lexical crossroads with our 20-month-old twin girls. 

Or maybe it's a fork in the road.

Perhaps a traffic circle?  

Anyway, we're on a metaphorical road or path of some sort and we're at the point on that road where we have to figure out what euphemism we want to use when we talk about the girls' lady business. Businesses.  See?  Like I said--it's a problem.

We need to get on this posthaste too, because the days when they want to discuss their...you know...junk, are virtually upon us. 

Currently, they're fascinated by bodily functions, and although they don't always correctly distinguish "poo-poo" from "pee-pee," they are quite adept at pronouncing the words.  And somehow, those words don't bother my wife or me.  They're neither too cutesy nor too vulgar.  They seem to be pretty much the preferred juvenile terminology for "feces" and "urine" nowadays, and I don't think any of their future preschool classmates and teachers will think they have negligent parents because they use the non-clinical terms.

But in addition to the stuff they see in their dirty diapers, they are also fascinated with the body parts the diapers conceal.  At bathtime, they've started poking each other in the butt, saying "poo-poo," and falling into fits of laughter.  I know.  Comedy gold, right?

The fascination doesn't stop with the butt, either.  They both dedicate a little bit of bathtime every day to exploring their crotchal areas.  And again, their commentary in this context is restricted to the phrases "pee-pee" and "poo-poo," which they use interchangeably to refer to anything that happens or exists in the diapered region.  I may once again be projecting my own anxieties onto the kids, but I swear that when they verbally flail around with "poo-poo pee-pee," they look at us quizzically, almost plaintively, wondering why we don't tell them the right words.

Outside is Always Better

A while ago, I was whining on another group blog about what an ass-pain it is to take kids on out-of-town trips.  I still maintain that the benefits of exposing toddlers to a new environment that requires sleeping under a different roof barely outweigh the onus of hauling all of their equipment to that location.  Unless you're going to see Grandma, you might as well just go to the vacant lot down the street as take your kid across the county line.  I honestly believe that a two-year-old can't tell the difference between Chuck E. Cheese and Disneyland.  So they certainly wouldn't be any more impressed by Yosemite National Park than by the abandoned rock quarry just outside of town.

Despite the hassles of traveling with youngsters, I was reminded just yesterday of a very valuable and probably completely obvious lesson: it's almost always better to get the kids out of the house than to coop them up for long stretches of time.  I always assumed this was the case, and have hardly ever kept our twins at home all day since they were born 20 months ago.  But yesterday they seemed pretty tired, having been out late at a dinner party/playdate the night before.  In fact, they had done so much fun stuff the previous week that they were pretty run down.  Or maybe I was projecting my own condition onto them.

Things I'll have to explain to my kids someday: the animal edition

 

Every culture that has arisen since the dawn of man has anthropomorphized animals to teach children about the world.

I have no idea if that's true.  But I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were.

I've been thinking about this a lot ever since we first started reading books to our kids, which was pretty much as soon as their eyes could focus on the page.

90% of the characters in their books are non-humans.  I think it's about the same for movies and TV shows, although we haven't really gotten into that stuff yet.

The easy explanation for why the characters are bears and spiders and puppies is that these critters hold the kids' attention better than boring old homo sapiens. The Naked Ape, it would seem, just doesn't have the star power of the gorilla or caterpillar.

That's why fables can be so effective.  A cast of talking animals interacts in a way that's instructive in terms of human behavior, but may or may not have anything to do with the traits of their species.  Are foxes really more prone to cognitive dissonance than other animals?  Maybe?  But more importantly, Aesop knew that the image of a fox lunging at grapes that were just out of his reach and then pretending that he never wanted them in the first place is more striking and therefore more memorable than that of a generic human doing the same thing.

More Hating on Disney: Baby Einstein Edition

I'm afraid I'm about to get self-righteous and snobby and maybe a little preachy.

I didn't set out to do that.  I was going to write a snarky little post about how babies have terrible taste and the books they enjoy often have little literary or artistic merit.  Something like:

WTF is up with Goodnight Moon, anyway?  "Goodnight, nobody/Goodnight, mush"?  It's like somebody transcribed their peyote trip.  And the artwork, arbitrarily alternatint from vertiginously lurid color blocks to black and white line drawings, is as discomfiting as a David Lynch movie, but far less visually interesting.

And don't get me started on Baby Einstein...

But I did get started on Baby Einstein, and became a little horrified in the process.