GatorFarmer
Member
I thought there was something odd about the stroller that the woman staying next to us uses when I first saw it. There was a shiny bit of plastic wrapped around it that isolates the child from the elements. Perhaps that would make sense on a day when it was snowing or the rain was coming down in sheets, yet I'd see her push her son - who looks about a year old - around in it the last few days when the sun was shining and it has been around 60 degrees here in VA.
That's part of what got me thinking.
I have a one year old (well, 13 months old now) myself. I throw him up on my shoulders and let him yank on my hair to take him around. It's more convenient to just shoulder the weight than mess with a stroller. I did the same thing with his brother before him. You have to learn to duck when going in certain doors, though accidents are bound to happen a time or two. Like falling down when learning to walk, those build character.
During the winter my wife would always want me to bundle the boys up. While I'd never object to putting them in something sensible like a jacket, and perhaps a hat, I never saw the need to bundle them up like poor Ralphie (of "shoot your eye out" with the Red Ryder fame) just because it was snowing. I also never understood the idea of a paniced rush just because it was cold out, snowing a bit, or raining. Thus I'd let my two year old out with just a jacket on to play in snow and throw snowballs. When he got cold, he'd cry and run and grab me. Seemed a good system.
I also let my children go to the store wearing footy jammies. That's something that they ought enjoy while they can. When the youngest gets his face dirty, I don't always rush to clean it. He seems to delight in getting dirty when he eats (my other son is the exact opposite and cleans himself fastidiously with a napkin already). Figuring that the kid is just going to get dirty again, I'll let him dig whole heartedly into a bowl of pasta. I also let my children eat donuts since they seem to have the same metabolism I do. My youngest, Brody, seems to delight in the same treat that I loved when young - eating pats of butter from the packages at a restaurant by themselves and frosting things with butter. (I still like to frost things with butter to this day, when I'm drawing closer to 40 than I am to 30 and I'm back to wearing the same size pants that I did in college. Mmmm, butter.)
I let my kids wear boonie hats and little boots in preference to clothes from the baby Gap. Sometimes I buy their clothes from the clearance rack at Walmart. Why? Because boys at a certain age tend to ruin their clothes quickly anyway. My one year old loves cherry pie for example. He loves it so much that he'll aggressively attack pieces of it to the point that his clothes often don't even wash clean. (Once, at McDonalds, the results of his eating required not only a mop and bucket but a special caution sign. Thataboy.)
My wife hates the way I dress the kids sometimes. I found this odd because random people, usually women, would approach me and tell me how cute my children are when I was alone with them. My wife says that I make them look like little rednecks when I do something like turn a sweater into a pair of pants (you can do it) for Brody when he manages to get everything else so dirty that it has to be put in bags.
Apparently there's a reverse form of sexism that I never knew existed. As a dad, I'm told by my wife, it's okay and expected, even cute, to put boys in boots, boonie hats, jammies, etc. She claims that as a mom, people look down on her if the kids look like that, or Brody has a dirty face.
I notice that I don't see many fathers do what I do any more. They don't put their kids on their back. They're not down in the dirt unabashedly playing with little green army men with their boys. They're not letting them run around and fetch toys or sometimes break their plastic trucks tossing them around. They order apple slices and not french fries, and sometimes I see someone look askance because I'll hand my toddler a donut (I also let him drink coffee, just as I was always given coffee as a child and indeed sent to preschool with a thermos full of it since milk made me sick but black coffee was fine).
Getting tired of listening to the same Sponge Bob cartoons over and over again, I finally swapped out Liam's (the two year and change old's) DVD in the player that sits in the car to keep him amused. First it was WWE cage matches collected, which he loved even more (he loves wrestling), and then currently I simply let him watch Full Metal Jacket over and over again. He babbles back at it and always delights in the opening scenes. Since he's "speech delayed", I figured that film would also help him with his vocabularly.
I don't know that I'm supposed to do all these things, but my kids seem... more affectionate and happier than the kids that I see wrapped in plastic in jogging strollers and eating their dried apple filth. My boys will run around with dirty knees eating their donuts (and if they drop a piece and then pick it up and eat it off the floor, I don't panic). They don't seem to get sick much, and people actually tell me how patient and well behaved my children often seem.
Gradually I'm coming to wonder if many men - even those who stick around to be a part of their children's lives - know that they ought perhaps do these things. To let their children, particularly sons, get rained on, fall down in the snow and eat donuts. Then later to get them pocket knives, teach them how to build fires, char meat, and fish with a stick, some string and a paper clip.
I don't want to have a son that needs Gerber soft cheese puff out of a plastic cup meant for pudgy little fingers. I let him ride in the cart in a store eating a spare rib. He liked it so much that he sucked all the meat off the bone and then sat idly chewing the bone. (None of my kids have ever had pacifiers, only things like beef jerky to suck/gnaw on. Perhaps a good thing since I've seen kids old enough to walk and talk with pacifiers.)
I let my kids walk and run if they want to or else carry them on my back rather than using strollers. I can't imagine wrapping one of them in plastic (the lady's kid isn't sick or anything, since I later saw her smoking next to him while he was finally allowed to crawl and poke at the ground briefly).
I never thought I'd say it, let alone think it, but maybe - despite the fact that I had zero role models and make it all up as I go alone - just maybe the world needs more dad's like me.
That's part of what got me thinking.
I have a one year old (well, 13 months old now) myself. I throw him up on my shoulders and let him yank on my hair to take him around. It's more convenient to just shoulder the weight than mess with a stroller. I did the same thing with his brother before him. You have to learn to duck when going in certain doors, though accidents are bound to happen a time or two. Like falling down when learning to walk, those build character.
During the winter my wife would always want me to bundle the boys up. While I'd never object to putting them in something sensible like a jacket, and perhaps a hat, I never saw the need to bundle them up like poor Ralphie (of "shoot your eye out" with the Red Ryder fame) just because it was snowing. I also never understood the idea of a paniced rush just because it was cold out, snowing a bit, or raining. Thus I'd let my two year old out with just a jacket on to play in snow and throw snowballs. When he got cold, he'd cry and run and grab me. Seemed a good system.
I also let my children go to the store wearing footy jammies. That's something that they ought enjoy while they can. When the youngest gets his face dirty, I don't always rush to clean it. He seems to delight in getting dirty when he eats (my other son is the exact opposite and cleans himself fastidiously with a napkin already). Figuring that the kid is just going to get dirty again, I'll let him dig whole heartedly into a bowl of pasta. I also let my children eat donuts since they seem to have the same metabolism I do. My youngest, Brody, seems to delight in the same treat that I loved when young - eating pats of butter from the packages at a restaurant by themselves and frosting things with butter. (I still like to frost things with butter to this day, when I'm drawing closer to 40 than I am to 30 and I'm back to wearing the same size pants that I did in college. Mmmm, butter.)
I let my kids wear boonie hats and little boots in preference to clothes from the baby Gap. Sometimes I buy their clothes from the clearance rack at Walmart. Why? Because boys at a certain age tend to ruin their clothes quickly anyway. My one year old loves cherry pie for example. He loves it so much that he'll aggressively attack pieces of it to the point that his clothes often don't even wash clean. (Once, at McDonalds, the results of his eating required not only a mop and bucket but a special caution sign. Thataboy.)
My wife hates the way I dress the kids sometimes. I found this odd because random people, usually women, would approach me and tell me how cute my children are when I was alone with them. My wife says that I make them look like little rednecks when I do something like turn a sweater into a pair of pants (you can do it) for Brody when he manages to get everything else so dirty that it has to be put in bags.
Apparently there's a reverse form of sexism that I never knew existed. As a dad, I'm told by my wife, it's okay and expected, even cute, to put boys in boots, boonie hats, jammies, etc. She claims that as a mom, people look down on her if the kids look like that, or Brody has a dirty face.
I notice that I don't see many fathers do what I do any more. They don't put their kids on their back. They're not down in the dirt unabashedly playing with little green army men with their boys. They're not letting them run around and fetch toys or sometimes break their plastic trucks tossing them around. They order apple slices and not french fries, and sometimes I see someone look askance because I'll hand my toddler a donut (I also let him drink coffee, just as I was always given coffee as a child and indeed sent to preschool with a thermos full of it since milk made me sick but black coffee was fine).
Getting tired of listening to the same Sponge Bob cartoons over and over again, I finally swapped out Liam's (the two year and change old's) DVD in the player that sits in the car to keep him amused. First it was WWE cage matches collected, which he loved even more (he loves wrestling), and then currently I simply let him watch Full Metal Jacket over and over again. He babbles back at it and always delights in the opening scenes. Since he's "speech delayed", I figured that film would also help him with his vocabularly.
I don't know that I'm supposed to do all these things, but my kids seem... more affectionate and happier than the kids that I see wrapped in plastic in jogging strollers and eating their dried apple filth. My boys will run around with dirty knees eating their donuts (and if they drop a piece and then pick it up and eat it off the floor, I don't panic). They don't seem to get sick much, and people actually tell me how patient and well behaved my children often seem.
Gradually I'm coming to wonder if many men - even those who stick around to be a part of their children's lives - know that they ought perhaps do these things. To let their children, particularly sons, get rained on, fall down in the snow and eat donuts. Then later to get them pocket knives, teach them how to build fires, char meat, and fish with a stick, some string and a paper clip.
I don't want to have a son that needs Gerber soft cheese puff out of a plastic cup meant for pudgy little fingers. I let him ride in the cart in a store eating a spare rib. He liked it so much that he sucked all the meat off the bone and then sat idly chewing the bone. (None of my kids have ever had pacifiers, only things like beef jerky to suck/gnaw on. Perhaps a good thing since I've seen kids old enough to walk and talk with pacifiers.)
I let my kids walk and run if they want to or else carry them on my back rather than using strollers. I can't imagine wrapping one of them in plastic (the lady's kid isn't sick or anything, since I later saw her smoking next to him while he was finally allowed to crawl and poke at the ground briefly).
I never thought I'd say it, let alone think it, but maybe - despite the fact that I had zero role models and make it all up as I go alone - just maybe the world needs more dad's like me.
