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The Right Passage

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Dear Benjamin,

A lot of parents reach the teen milestone with their children and wonder, “Where did all the years go?” Some moms and dads even take to humming the words to “Sunrise, Sunset.”

Rather than get all maudlin (just yet), I’d like you to know I’m not surprised that you’re 13. I have a billion pictures, dozens of columns, and countless parenting battle scars to mark your steps toward this passage into teendom.

As I consider what the next seven years will look like, I do have small fears of having to purchase sides of beef to feed you and visions of Rebel Without a Cause scenes being played out at home. However, aside from an inconsistency in doing chores and a sense of humor that too often includes the imitation of hungry turtles and using my bald spot as the butt of jokes, I think you’re pretty fantastic.

It’s important to note that your thirteen-year-old awesomeness has not come easily. During the last four months alone, you’ve undergone a dazzling array of adolescent challenges. In the midst of a growth spurt that has forced your mother to look up at you sooner than she’d hoped and has cost a fortune in replacement shoes, you’ve been lucky to walk straight on coltish legs, let alone run. But run you did, down a wet grassy hill, then slipped, landed, and snapped your upper arm. In shock and pain, you suffered through my callous disbelief that you did anything but dislocate the bone, another of your three ER visits, excruciating muscle spasms, a lost basketball season, a resetting of the arm, and a mending process that took triple the time anyone expected.

Along with all that, your mouth decided to compete with your arm for anatomical mayhem. Your orthodontist took a look at the area he had just five months before called a territory of peace and declared war on it. Braces needed to be fitted on the lower range, neck gear was prescribed, and four wisdom teeth required extraction to prevent something akin to geopolitical disaster from occurring. If it was me going through simultaneous skeletal rehab and oral surgery, I would want to crawl into a hole. But you handled everything with few complaints.

This went on in addition to the regular pre-teen pressures of stressful academics and raging hormones. You really stepped up your game in school, though not without some grumpiness and the panic of some misplaced papers. You’ve come a long way from kindergarten class where you learned numbers in between giggle attacks to the rigors of middle school algebra and world history. And even though I drive you crazy about homework management, I hope you realize how impressed I am that you can explain the science behind my back pain.

You’ve gotten through a lot of this compressed chaos with the help of your great passion — books. It’s hard to imagine you are the same little boy who struggled in first grade to puzzle out a sentence. Back then, your mom and I had to be restrained by your teacher from hiring a legion of educational therapists. Now, we actually resort to cutting off your library privileges and Amazon account if we want to give you consequences for your infrequent behavioral slip-ups.

On the occasion of this significant passage, we are not only proud of your hard work and fortitude. We stand in wonder at your giving nature, which has propelled you to mount a campaign against the exploitation of laborers in the Congo and to improve the reading skills of those less fortunate than you. Although I’d like to pat myself on the back for your many good interpersonal qualities, I am humbled by your abilities to be such a loyal and big-hearted friend and family member.

Benjamin, when I look at you, I see all that you have been and are today. I see the baby of the fat thighs and belly laugh. I see the little boy of the backwards hats and karate chops. I see the big kid of the cell phone appendage and still cuddly habits. You will always make me proud just by being you. As you enter your teenage years, though, you do yourself honor by your diverse and meaningful actions.

Love,

Dad

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Teens | Leave a comment

What Dads Need to Know: Ten Tips to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Family Man

By Dr. Jenn Berman

Intelligence experts estimate that only 20% of a person’s success is attributed to IQ but that as much as the entire remaining 80 percent may be a direct result of what has become known as EQ, or emotional intelligence. Psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer who are believed to have first coined the term “emotional intelligence,” define it as “a subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others, feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” People who have a high EQ exhibit the following:

– Impulse control

– Problem solving skills

– Empathy

– The ability to self-soothe

– The ability to delay gratification

– Self motivation

– Read other people’s emotional cues

– Self esteem

– Adaptability

– Resilience

– The ability to identify, express and understand feelings

The Dumbing Down of America?

While children have gotten intellectually smarter over the years, emotional intelligence has not risen accordingly. Scientists have noted the “Flynn Effect”, apparent since the advent of IQ testing a century ago, that in every industrialized nation each successive generation has scored higher than the previous generation. American IQs, for example, have consistently risen by an average of 8 points per generation. EQ, on the other hand, appears to have plummeted. Out of control violence, mental illness, risky sexual behavior, poor impulse control and school drop out rates are indicators of this problematic trend.

The Benefits of High EQ

According to Lawrence Shapiro, PhD, the author of How to Raise a Child With a High EQ, “having a high EQ may be more important to success in life than a high IQ as measured by a standardized test of verbal and nonverbal cognitive intelligence.” Children who have high EQs achieve better academically, have fewer temper tantrums, are better problem solvers, are less impulsive, have better attention spans, are more motivated, physically healthier and are more well-liked by their peers. The great news about EQ is that parents are the greatest influencers of high EQ scores. Children learn most of their emotional lessons from their parents and so there is a lot that parents can do if they are interested in increase their children’s EQ.

10 Things Parents Can Do to Increase EQ

1. Pay attention to your child’s cues, starting from birth.

Studies show that infants whose caretakers don’t pay attention to their cues have difficulty developing the ability to regulate their own emotions. If, for example, a mother with post-partum depression is too depressed to respond to her child’s cues, that baby might give up on crying as a means of communication and become passive and disengaged. Without his mother’s help learning how to calm himself down, he may not learn effective calming skills.

2. Teach self calming skills.

An anxious baby cannot recognize social cues from those around him and an anxious child cannot learn in school or make friends. Children look to their parents to gain these soothing skills. An easy way for parents to help is to hold, rock, talk to and sing to their children to help them calm down. As children get older, their skills become more complex. When my daughter Quincy was 18 months old she went through a period when she was waking up during the night and having trouble calming herself back to sleep. Every night before she went to sleep I would talk to her about “The Plan.” I told her that when she had trouble sleeping that she should put her pacifier in her mouth, hug her piggy (a stuffed animal) and snuggle with her blanket. I made these suggestions based on my own observations of what had worked for her previously. The plan became so ingrained that sometimes she would start to cry and remind herself out loud, “paci, piggy, blanket.”

3. Help children understand and identify their emotions.

For young children, intense emotions can be scary and overwhelming. Identifying and labeling their emotions can normalize those emotions and allow kids to identify the responses in others which ultimately helps them to develop empathy. Believe it or not, studies show that the act of labeling an emotion can have a soothing effect on the nervous system which allows kids to recover more quickly from upsetting events. According to John Gottman, PhD, author of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, “This doesn’t mean telling kids how they ought to feel. It simply means helping them develop a vocabulary with which to express their emotions.”

4. Reduce television viewing.

The average child spends 38 hours each week watching television. According to Shapiro, “it is passive time spent in front of the TV that stunts the growth of EQ skills.” Studies show that children who watch a lot of TV are more fearful, anxious, and aggressive as well as desensitized to the pain and suffering of others than that of their peers who watch less television. Experts have found that children who are frequently exposed to inappropriate images and situations are 11 times more likely to be disruptive, fight with family members, hit other kids and destroy property. To make that statistic stand out even more, those same researchers claim that children who watched a lot of TV when they were eight years old are more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults than their peers who did not watch as much TV. To add insult to injury, all that tube time is time not spent interacting with peers, developing social skills, or problem-solving.

5. Give accurate praise.

Give accurate, honest praise that reflects back to your child an accurate mirror of her accomplishments. Excessive and lavish praise prevents children from seeing you as an accurate judge of her abilities and prevents her from getting to know her own strengths and weaknesses.

6. Teach problem solving.

The ability to solve problems is developed primarily from experience. Sometimes it is easier for parents to solve their child’s problem rather than teach them how to do it on their own. Children start to learn to problem solve in infancy. When my daughter Mendez was 9 months old we were sitting together while she played with a ball. The ball slipped out of her hands and rolled away from her, just outside of her reach. My first instinct was to solve the problem for her and hand her the ball, but I held back and allowed her to solve the problem for herself. She ultimately crawled over to the ball stretching in a way she never had before and proudly showed me the ball. As children become more verbal, they tend to need their parents to brainstorm problem solving ideas with them. The keys for parents is sending the message that every problem has a solution and having the patience to help children find their own age-appropriate resolutions.

7. Model empathy.

Empathy, which usually develops within the first six years of life, is the ability to understand the perspective of another person and on a deeper level to feel what another person is feeling. When parents can demonstrate empathy to their children it makes those children feel supported and allows them to see their parents as allies. According to Gottman, “If we can communicate this kind of intimate emotional understanding to our children, we give credence to their experience and help them learn to soothe themselves.” Empathetic children have a much better time making and keeping friends.

8. Set clear limits and enforce them consistently.

Giving your children clear and consistent rules shows them you care about their well-being and makes them feel safe. Imagine driving your car in a world with no rules or regulations to aid drivers; it would be chaotic and scary. A home without consistent rules for a child is the same as a lawless road. Children need boundaries to feel contained and cared about. Without rules to live by and the ability to follow the “laws” of the family, children grow up anxious and disrespectful. They believe it is permissible to behave however they choose because no one has taught them otherwise. This creates narcissistic children who lack empathy and emotional intelligence.

9. Allow your children to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Helping children understand at an early age that they are responsible for the choices they make as well as for the consequences of their actions promotes a sense of mastery and self confidence. One of the most difficult tasks for parents to master is allowing their kids to suffer the consequences of their choices and actions. But in order for children to grow up to become responsible, high EQ adults, this is a crucial developmental step for them to take.

10. Don’t protect your kids from all of life’s stresses, pains and difficulties.

Coping with stress and pain is the best way to learn coping skills. While children should not be exposed to material that is beyond their comprehension or development, they should be exposed to day to day stress and difficulties. When Carol and James started to notice that Buster, the elderly family dog, was nearing the end, Carol started to talk about death with four-year-old Stella. When Buster passed away they allowed Stella to see them cry and talked to her about their grief. This helped her to understand her own grieving process, develop empathy and normalize her own feelings.

Dr. Jenn Berman is a Marriage, Family and Child Therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. She has appeared as a psychological expert on hundreds of television shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show and is a regular on The Today Show, The Early Show, and CNN. She hosts a live daily call-in advice show called “The Love and Sex Show with Dr. Jenn” on Sirius/XM’s Cosmo Radio 5-7 pm PST (heard five hours a day seven days a week). She is the author of the LA Times best selling books SuperBaby: 12 Ways to Give Your Child a Head Start in the First 3 Years, The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy Confident Kids, and the children’s book Rockin’ Babies. Dr. Jenn is also on the Board of Advisors for Parents Magazine. In addition, Dr. Jenn has an eco-friendly clothing line for adults and children called Retail Therapy . All the tees have positive “feel good” messages and are made of organic and recycled materials. Dr. Jenn lives in Los Angeles with her husband and twin daughters. For more information on go to www.DoctorJenn.com or follow her on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/drjennberman and www.Facebook.com/DrJennBerman.

Posted in Child Development, Featured Moms & Dads, What Dads Need to Know | Leave a comment

Habitrails to You

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

I don’t like rodents as a rule. Anything related to a rat gives me the willies and I have been known to run like a scared deer from anything that even looks like it could mistake me for a chunk of cheese.

This is why I did not want a hamster in my home. Just because it’s only a cousin to the type of creatures that inspired horror films like Willard didn’t mean I wanted its scurrying feet and twitching nose under my roof.

So I persistently said no to my middle son, Jacob, despite his annual requests for a hamster. I agreed to the countless goldfish that came home from carnivals. I said yes to the two hermit crabs. I had no problem with the Sea Monkeys. All these animals required low maintenance and posed no imminent threat of busting out of their bowls to gnaw on my ear in the middle of the night.

Yet, this year, my son came home one evening with a huge smile and a tiny gift.

“You – bought – a hamster,” I said haltingly to my son and his grandmother, who had no inkling of my aversion to said rodent.

“Daddy, he’s really cute! Look — ” he replied as he opened the box.

Reluctantly, I peered into the carton, half expecting to see the thing bare its famous two sets of incisors at me with murder in its beady eyes.

What I found was a puff of honey-colored fur that my son could not stop cooing over. And by the time Jacob and his grandparents had set up the Habitrail so that little Bijou could run enthusiastically on her red wheel, I felt mildly accepting of our new family member.

Over the next three months, I overcame my fears about hamsters because of Bijou. I giggled with the kids as she ran through the house in the plastic ball. I took to feeding her treats and even held her occasionally.

Most of all, I appreciated the way Jacob prized her as his very own. He talked to her regularly, read a book on hamsters, and helped nurture her in a way that was more personal than his experience with our still beloved dog. She was every bit the emotional and scientific learning experience a pet should be for a child.

Then, Bijou stopped running on her wheel. We didn’t really notice the difference for a couple of days, but when we did, we got concerned. So, we put her in the rolling ball and, because she rotated around the house happily, thought we had figured out she just preferred exercising in open spaces rather than in a cage.

Days later, Wendy spotted diarrhea in Bijou’s bedding and our own stomachs dropped. We studied up on what might be wrong and found the likely culprit in wet tail, an illness that had a lot of possible causes yet only one cure, antibiotics.

Despite knowing a veterinarian visit would cost exponentially more than the $7 critter (yes, we agonized about the medical expense), we called various clinics that night. No one would see her as she was considered an exotic animal and other options were closed or prohibitively far. We also commiserated with our friend Randy, who had seen her son’s own hamster take a bad turn due to glaucoma. The next day, Wendy visited a number of pet stores looking for medicine, but no one had the antidote.

By nightfall, Bijou quietly passed on to that great pet heaven where our family’s two cats, seven fish, two hermit crabs, and five billion Sea Monkeys resided.

We had a funeral in the side yard where we buried our Golden Hamster next to a rose bush.

“May you help these flowers grow the way you grew in our hearts,” Jacob eulogized.

 There’s a part of me that feels absurd going over the events of a furry rodent’s demise. Yet, despite her small size, Bijou had taught my nine year old a lot about caring for something other than himself, about loss, and that life goes on.

Some time after, Jacob felt a bit more normalized about the absence of his tiny friend, so he chose a new hamster. Bolstered by the knowledge of how to care for the creature and watch for serious health problems, he was willing to try again. While I had proven to myself that I could accept a rodent into my house without regular nightmares, Jacob had shown a capacity for resilience. Not bad for $7.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Pets | Leave a comment

A Winter of Wonder

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

“Actually, there is no Santa Claus.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“It’s really just your parents putting presents under a tree.”

With this simple exchange, all my efforts to preserve a sense of wonder for my children seemed to disappear like a certain red-suited man into the night sky.

No, my son was not the one who had his bubble burst. My son was the self-designated debunker of myths.

“Jacob really didn’t do that, did he?” I said to my wife when she reported the crime against imagination.

“Freddy’s father won’t let him play with Jacob ever again,” Wendy revealed.

We both sat there feeling vaguely sick. We had never even hinted that there might not be a Santa Claus. In fact we had raised all of our sons to believe in everything from the spirit of Elijah coming to our Passover celebration to the Tooth Fairy’s punctual visits with the loss of each baby chomper.

Wendy and I always wanted our sons’ world soaring with flights of fancy that could open their minds. From the time they were born, we sprinkled their dreams with countless fantastical books about dragons that made easy pets and Greek gods who could summon the elements at will. We even made up our own stories which put our boys at the center of magical tales involving red pirates, black robots, and a lonely imaginary friend called “Gigglemonster.”

Not a month after the Santa Claus incident, Jacob the Literalist struck again — at the aforementioned Tooth Fairy.

“Ari, that’s not really fairy dust on the floor,” he explained to our five-year-old about the baby powder we employed to make it look like the real “Captain Incisor” had dropped by.

“Mommy and Daddy left you the money under your pillow,” he continued in his assault on our littlest one’s rightful illusions. “By the way, they should have left you more than two dollars.”

Nice. Not only was our kid stealing years of blissful ignorance from his younger brother, he was nitpicking our generosity. And he was taking away our God-given right to conjure and manipulate figments of imagination. Heck, for years, my dad was able to act like a magician who could say “poof” and the traffic light would turn green (I was about driving age before I figured out how he did it). As a Dad, I wanted to have that power, too.

So what do we do with a child, now nine years old going on 50, who shoots down pretend creatures as if they were a line of rubber ducks in an arcade shooting gallery?

The deeper truth is that Jacob is wrestling with the world, trying to make sense of it, to control it. He wants to be the one with the most information. He worries he will forget to bring his homework on time and frets about his parents coming late to pick him up from soccer practice.

It all stems from Jacob’s hyper-observational tendencies that pick up on the anxiety my wife and I have about meeting deadlines, earning enough money, and making sure everyone has on the right clothes for the day.

We certainly don’t invite our kids into our adult cyclone and our other two carry on with few cares in the world. However, Jacob seems to think he has to act middle aged. This is why he is the first one to do his chores and offer to return his modest allowance to help pay bills.

To alleviate his concerns, we have assured him that we’ve got everything under control. Food, shelter, and clothing are guaranteed, even if exotic vacations and Daddy’s hoped-for 350 Z are not. We want Jacob to be a little kid, to believe in magical creatures and dreams that come true.

So we continue to read to Jacob, tell him stories, show him whimsical paintings, and screen inventive movies. And, thankfully, he loves it all – which doesn’t mean he’ll be converted all the way back into a wide-eyed innocent. It’s OK, though, because it’s our job as his parents to balance the really true with the really amazing.

While magic seems particularly absent in a world of economic fear and mortal danger, this holiday time is more important than ever to boost our children’s sense of wonder, to shower them with all the stories of flying reindeer and miracles of light and whatever your cultural, religious, or family traditions offer. This is not to pull the wool over their eyes. This is to fill them with the power of possibility.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Humor | Leave a comment

Abracadabra

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

“Guess who’s sitting in the school director’s office,” my wife says with irony and irritation that cut through the crackling cell phone connection.

“Jacob,” I say with a little guilt for assuming the worst of my improving but still impulsive 6-year-old.

“Guess again,” Wendy coaxes.

“Benjamin?” I respond with surprise, despite my 9-year-old’s recent visit to the principal for criminal chattiness.

“Nope,” she says.

For a moment, I search my memory banks. I’m sitting at work with an unfinished email, stacks of papers and two appointments waiting. Do I have to play daddy right now?

And then it dawns on me. I have a third child.

“What the heck did Ari do?” I blurt.

“One of the bigger kids in his class took away Ari’s toy,” Wendy explains. “Ari used his words first but when the other boy would not return it, Ari – sort of – bit him.”

I drop my head into my hands. “Did he draw blood?”

“No blood,” Wendy says, “but Beryl (the school director) doesn’t want us to pick him up because he seemed too happy at the prospect of one of us getting him like I did last week.”

I agree, hang up and try to sort this out in my mind. My 3-year-old had been having a marvelous first year of preschool. Teachers and kids found him gregarious and charming. But with two weeks left before winter break, Ari started throwing tantrums. One day he poured juice in everyone’s snack and blew angry “raspberry” sounds at his instructors, Debbie and Alee. On another day, he bit Alee for not giving him enough attention. For that incident, Wendy immediately left work to collect him from his classroom.

Today, I’m driving into the school parking lot at the normal pick-up hour, bracing for a difficult conversation about my child’s behavior and my parenting flaws. Beryl graciously receives me into her office while Ari stays on the yard.

“Before we get into everything, I want to tell you that Ari and I had lunch together,” Beryl says. “That boy is adorable.”

“He also has the adorable distinction of chomping on people,” I reply with nervous sarcasm.
Beryl laughs, then explains more about the lunch. “It was good that you and Wendy did not pick him up earlier. He really felt bad about having to stay in the office and not go home with you or play with his friends, here.”

“At one point,” Beryl continues, “Ari closed his eyes, waved his hands toward me, and said, ‘Abracadabra, Beryl go away.’ He actually tried that several times, and each time he was disappointed that I was still there.”

Oh, God, I think. My son is insulting his way toward expulsion.

Instead of chastising me, Beryl talks me through possible causes for Ari’s outbursts. Does Ari feel pushed around by his older brothers? Does he feel jealous that he’s still in school for another week while his siblings are on vacation? He has no idea how bored his brothers are because Wendy and I are working, so perhaps Ari is trying to get sent home to join the perceived family fun. Unfortunately, it all makes sense and I kick myself for not seeing signs that he was so upset.

As I drive home from the meeting, I wish I had an “abracadabra” that could make me do all the right things to parent Ari. Each of my sons requires unique approaches to his challenges. Have I run out of ideas on this third go-around?

Then I sit down with my boy on the couch to read The Escape of Marvin the Ape. He laughs and hugs me repeatedly saying, “You’re the best daddy in the whole world.”

Truly, most of the time, Ari is like this. He’s big on loving, generosity and glee. But he’s now gotten big with his temper. And I’ll need serious resolve to set him straight.

“You made your friends and teachers sad today, Ari,” I state gravely.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He holds my face with his hands as if to show me he believes in me. “No more biting.”

As hard as this job can be, there is no denying the magic that also comes from it.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Humor | Leave a comment

A Little Inspiration

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Weeks into the torment that middle-of-the-night crying causes parents of newborns, my wife and I prayed that our baby, Jacob, would find his thumb to soothe him. Night after night, we lay in bed, deciding if we should feed him, rock him, stick him out on the porch, or let him wail it out. Yet, if he could simply suck a finger or two, as his older brother Benjamin had as an infant, Jacob would cut down scores of painful wake-ups.

Alas, Jacob never did, though he tried. On several mornings in a row, we would fetch him from the crib and find scratch marks all around his mouth. The little bugger was making the effort – he just had bad aim.

So we gave in to stuffing a pacifier in his mouth and, after his suck grew strong enough to keep the thing in place, we were granted more consistent shut-eye.

Oh, what consequences we suffered for giving in to our shallow lust for slumber. For the next several years, Jacob relied on the brightly colored soothers to sleep. However, he frequently misplaced his pacifier during the night, losing it under his blanket or dropping it out of the crib altogether (with parental bionic hearing, we winced upon hearing the plastic smack the wood floor). Whenever this happened, he’d shout for us to find it or, when he switched to a big-boy bed, run into our room to get a replacement from the stash we kept in a night table.

Nighttime “pacie” sucking wasn’t enough for Jacob. He needed one for car rides, TV watching and trips to the movies. If we didn’t have a pacie, he would often freak out, having become addicted to it as if it were toddler Valium.

After Jacob turned 3, we campaigned to abolish the pacie. We tempted him with rewards, offered a ceremonial burial of the little suckers and appealed to his maturity. But the pacifier played on … Until one shining night, just before his fifth birthday, when Jacob announced, “I don’t need my pacie anymore.”

Wendy and I looked at each other in disbelief. We hadn’t discussed ending the habit with him in weeks. After watching other signs of Jacob’s evolution since he began a new pre-kindergarten class, we tingled with the possibility that the binkie era was over.

Sure enough, Jacob survived the night. And the next night. While he slept on the third evening, Wendy created a certificate of completion from the “Pacie Fairy” and put it under his pillow along with a few dollars. Jacob arose the following morning with a huge grin. He really had quit the pacie – on his own terms – and he was beside himself with pride.

As much as we felt proud of Jacob, we experienced pangs over our baby’s growing up. In his force of will to surrender the pacie, Jacob shunned his beloved blanket, stopped petting our hair during evening cuddles, and even eschewed his mattress, choosing to fall asleep on the floor. We told him he didn’t need to chuck all of his soothers, but his resolve was firm.

And, for the first time, Jacob was an example for his older brother, who had done everything “first” before him. Benjamin (8) hadn’t given up sucking his fingers to fall asleep, which, as the dentist explained, was preventing his front teeth from fully extending. Needing some orthodontic work done as well, Benjamin was fitted with a “palate expander,” which had to be tightened each night to enlarge his mouth to accommodate future teeth. The metal contraption made finger sucking impossible.

Sad at the loss of a longtime comfort and struggling to relax at bedtime, Benjamin found a cheerleader in Jacob, who told him, “If I can do it, you can, too.” This certainly helped my oldest boy, who can now fall asleep without those fingers in his mouth.

In this month of resolutions, during which I have my own challenges of giving up procrastination and late-night comfort foods, I am humbled by the determination of my sons. Along with the happiness they usually bring me, my boys have become inspirations as well.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man | Leave a comment

Sarah’s Garden

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

We have this 70-year-old wooden chest that houses bundles of our memories. Inside are photos we have yet to press into books and a handful of art projects from our sons’ early childhoods.

One of the pieces is a handmade photo album of Benjamin (now 9) during his daycare tenure. Glued to the fading colored construction paper are pictures of him showing off his superhero underwear with his toddler friends, building sand castles as if real people were preparing to move into them, and dancing in the middle of circle time. On the cover of the album is a picture of a chubby-cheeked boy and the painted words, “Good-Buy Benjamin.”

The misspelling of “goodbye” is what makes me most wistful, especially now. English is the second language of Sarah, the daycare teacher who assembled that album and helped stack the building blocks of each of our three boys. For the last eight years, she has been the third parent to our sons. With the last of our boys heading off to preschool, I attempt to craft words of gratitude and admiration with melancholy tugging at every keystroke. I do not want to tell Sarah goodbye, no matter how it’s spelled.

We came to Sarah in 1999, after weeks of struggling to find the right care for our precious firstborn. As working parents, we had cobbled together maternity and paternity leaves, grandparent assistance and babysitting options for as long as we could. And finding one nanny sunbathing in our back yard while our son cried his eyes out in his crib was our last straw. Besides, Wendy and I believed in the socializing powers of daycare, so we researched every facility we could before we found our match – less than a mile from home.

From the start, the almost 6-foot tall Israeli was Benjamin’s tower of security at the daycare. She led our son and his United Nations of friends (the children hailed from El Salvador to Trinidad) in arts-and-crafts activities that rivaled those of the best preschools and in imaginative play on a sprawling yard most day camps would envy. Although her prices were modest, she had a tendency to dig into her savings to outfit her place with the latest equipment and for visits by that rock star of the preschool set, Mr. Al.

A year after Benjamin left Sarah’s garden, our middle son joined her band of merry kids. Sarah had to raise her accented voice a bit more with our pinball of a boy, but she and her honey-hearted assistant Efrat channeled him into painting and gymnastics. Adding to all the developmental benefits to our son, Sarah allowed us the flexibility to bring Jacob late if we had a morning off and her keen observations gave us insight into the complexities of Jacob’s nature.

Not long after Jacob’s graduation from daycare, Ari became our youngest child for Sarah’s tutelage. By this time, Sarah was so comfortable as the third parent that she peppered our older boys with familial questions, about their schools and friends, whenever they joined me to pick up their little brother. For his part, Ari walked around daycare like a grinning prince of his mini-kingdom, along with his fellow royal cousin Aaron.

Sometimes, Sarah drove us crazy with her persistent advice about tempering Ari’s tendency to push the other kids around, but we always knew she was hardest on us because we’d become so close. And it didn’t hurt that Sarah brought in the ebullient and funny Ziva to help keep up with our mischievous tike.

Sarah has given so much to our children. She’s taught them and protected them, nurturing them like her own. We are humbled by the fact that, without her, our kids would not be quite as proficient at friendships or manners or even singing (despite Sarah’s famous penchant for warbling off key). Although we will continue to visit her and have her over for dinners, I feel a dull ache as we adhere the last memories into the album of Sarah’s daycare. So, we will delete the “bye” – or even “buy” – from our farewell, because what remains is the “good.”

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, School | Leave a comment

Lovers and Fighters

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

My second-grader has grown seriously shaggy hair. He thinks he looks cool. His karate instructors call him “Shaun Cassidy.” His four-year-old brother calls him “easy pickings.”

That’s why, when the two get in a scuffle, Jacob goes straight for the locks, grabbing a hearty handful in his little mitt and tugging with the expression of a cowboy rasslin’ a rodeo steer.

Often, Benjamin screams in pain, “Help! He’s pulling my hair again!” He doesn’t hit back; he just takes it until my wife or I show up for the rescue.

Jacob thinks it’s funny to see Benjamin cry. He doesn’t realize how lucky he is that the older brother who’s twice his size doesn’t rearrange his face, Picasso style.

Both my boys love more than they fight, but Benjamin’s extremely patient. Perhaps it’s because he studies Tong Soo Do martial arts and maybe it’s his in-born temperament, but this kid has the tolerance of Gandhi.

He’s the kind of child who, when told it’s OK to shove an opponent out of the way in soccer, asks, “But can I stop and tell him ‘I’m sorry’?”

Now Jacob’s different. Sure he’s charming as hell and, as he matures, is learning to channel his burning emotions into monkey-bar athleticism and an ever-increasing vocabulary. But, man, no one wants to be within ten feet of a ticked-off Jacob for fear of meeting his fists of fury.

That’s not to say that Jacob doesn’t have his reasons for wanting to belt Benjamin in the kisser. Even when all Jacob wants to do is scribble with a crayon alongside Benjamin while he’s doing homework, my eldest son isn’t shy about dishing such classic brother lines as, “You’re so annoying!” and “Get away from me!”

Then there are the times when my Zen-master of a son just loses it. This happened the other day as Jacob dared to pick up Benjamin’s much-beloved GameBoy in the middle of record-setting Pokemon game. My seven-year-old shoved Jacob to the floor. Jacob yelled like a howler monkey and barreled his head into his big brother’s stomach. Benjamin roared back and threw his little brother back down before I decided to break it up.

While watching this unfold, part of me was dumbfounded – maybe a little entertained (even one-year-old Ari found the whole thing hysterically funny) — at how it went down. Part of me was proud of Jacob for being unafraid of Benjamin. Another part of me was OK with Benjamin showing some toughness against his younger brother’s aggression.

Once I apprehended my two “extreme fighters,” I realized I wasn’t disappointed in them. It was a mixed-up feeling, given that I do espouse the use of talk over the deployment of violence. However, I couldn’t shake a primal reality – all siblings beat the crap out of each other.

This sibling rivalry thing has been around so long the Bible credits the first brothers with starting the whole trend (with less than preferable results). Looking into my own history, there are knockdown battles I had with my poor younger sister who finally developed a Bionic Woman leg kick to neutralize my Olympic half-nelsons. The fighting is just something all parents have to deal with since siblings naturally get jealous of each other because of perceived preferential treatment and get punchy because of the sheer volume of time they spend together in homes and car backseats.

We bemoan our children’s failure to abide by our values of nonviolence. We fret in embarrassment that public displays of discord reflect our own failures. But where would we all be if we didn’t throw our siblings into a few hallway walls?

Experts say that fighting helps children learn to resolve conflicts with peers. Because of the relative safety of battling with a family member who will generally love him no matter what, a kid can develop the right way to settle differences. Another benefit of the rivalry: realizing that the world is contentious and often not fair. Through sibling wars, children accrue a sense that they have to live with some injustices and move on from them to other matters. While we must instruct our children to resolve their differences with words, we should also let them struggle among themselves, just as they will need to do in the big, bad world beyond us. That way, when a viciously insulting boss socks them in the gut, they have a reservoir of sibling-fed feelings to help them choose the right reaction.

Given our many goals for family harmony, it’s worth noting that having a houseful of scrapping kids is rather healthy. It better be, because my three sons are only getting bigger and the fights gradually becoming nastier… and, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear Jacob yelling that baby Ari has him in a headlock.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Siblings | Leave a comment

Camp Togetherness

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

At the beginning of kindergarten, Benjamin decorated a giant folder for his weekly schoolwork. When he brought it home, we deciphered a stick figure on a mountaintop, wearing what looked like a deployed parachute. Was it a scene from a Spy Kids flick or a G.I. Joe I-Can-Read book?

“It’s a picture of Mommy jumping off the cliff at family camp,” Benjamin proudly explained.

Yes, Wendy and I burst out laughing. Yes, we explained that, when Mommy went paragliding (hang-gliding with a parachute), she was clipped to an instructor with lots of safety equipment. And, yes, we can’t wait to return to family camp.

Two years ago, we attended our first session at a mountain facility run by the university my wife and I attended. Going in, I was skeptical. I am not a camper. Even the word “rustic” makes my eyes itch and my dreams fill with marauding bears.

But I was pleasantly surprised. The accommodations were civilized mini-condos (though without air conditioning, phones, or TVs) and the meals were sophisticated. I also found the grounds breathtaking, the staff amazing (made up largely of college students), and the activities diverse enough to rival a luxury cruise.

Best of all was the socializing. Benjamin spent much of his day with his Teddy Bear group, creating art, swimming, and hiking with counselors who seemed like in-person versions of Disney’s Out of the Box show. Wendy and I had our challenges with one-year-old Jacob — who was either napping or crawling toward danger — but enjoyed meals and sports with grown-ups happy to leave busy schedules at home.

The only element missing was something most of the other people enjoyed — familiarity. The beauty of this idyllic camp is that families return, year after year, to have fun and grow together, creating memories around the consistent surroundings.

So, in the year of Mommy’s Great Role-Model Stunt, we returned to build a tradition. This time, we were joined by my childhood buddy, Eric, his wife Nancy, and their three kids, who loved the extra time with my sons.

Benjamin had the grandest experience of our bunch, loving every minute of his days in the Cubs group. He soaked up the sun and information ranging from Native American culture to tie-dye shirts. Often, he was the loudest singer, leading his friends in spontaneous camp medleys at the pool, the veins popping from his neck as he shouted, “We Are the Cubbies, the Mighty, Mighty Cubbies!” He learned a few questionable tricks, too, such as shooting slingshots at lizards and filching cubes from the ice machine to dump down people’s shirts.

Then there’s the subject of independence. Because the camp is secluded and full of families, the place feels as safe as a 1950s country farm. So, many of the kids scoot about the grounds without supervision.

Encouraged by his 6-year-old friends, Benjamin (then 5), decided to walk himself to his group about midway through the week. At mealtimes, he started  grabbing his own meals from the buffet and sitting with his friends’ families.

While we had often wished for moments of reprieve from parental responsibility, we were short of breath at the thought that our little boy didn’t need us as escorts, let alone companions. We wanted our baby back, though we were proud that his confidence was rising.

For his part, Jacob became the camp charmer. He’d run around this expansive lawn, where all the kids played, asking, “What’s your name?” Everywhere else Jacob went, his grinning, dirt-smudged face became famous. So, when he’d run off, and we’d panic, “Where’d he go now?” we had a team of friendly detectives that never failed us.

Wendy and I had a few opportunities for grown-up adventures, like flying on a zip line, playing inner-tube water polo, and jumping off that cliff. Still, the moments of true joy were the ones we all spent together. We sat on blankets under a starry sky, watching a movie on the lawn. We snuggled with the kids for a boat ride around the lake. And we competed in egg tossing and watermelon eating contests at the week’s finale.

We will return to family camp this summer. Maybe we’ll do this for the next 20 years, like some of the families we’ve met up there. I think much of the draw for the adults is the chance to finally be that proverbial fly on the wall. Occasionally, I wish I could spy on my kids at their classrooms or playdates, to see them unfettered by my influence. With family camp, I get to see my kids at all hours of the day — with no deadlines to distract me or homework for them to do — to witness how they socialize, laugh, run, and sing.

While I still find it bittersweet to watch my sons get more independent, I’m thankful for the gift that one week a year gives to me, of seeing them grow. One day, my sons will be old enough to decide about jumping from cliffs. With the benefit of years watching them mature, I think I’ll be ready to trust they can fly on their own.

Posted in Camp, Child Development | Leave a comment

Loving Mud and Monkey Bars

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

A simple day at the park with my one-year-old quickly becomes a harrowing experience. Prepared with a blanket oasis of snacks and enough portable toys to entertain a preschool, I sit down with Jacob to watch his brother play T-Ball. A moment later this junior Tasmanian devil speed-crawls on a series of mad escapes around the park, mouthing pinecones, plunging into mud, and barreling onto the playing field amidst fly balls and high-kicking cleats. Each time, I catch him while he cackles giddily, showing off for the other parents as if to say, “My daddy lets me flirt with disaster. Feel free to call Child Protective Services!”

Every day, I attempt to salvage a shred of my parenting dignity in the face of a child who continues to climb bookshelves, procure sharp objects I never knew we owned, and dive under gallons of bubbly tub water looking for the latest thrill. Is Jacob heading for a life as a career contestant on Fear Factor? God, I hope not. But it certainly suggests something essential to both kids and parents—the need to try, to experiment, to seek answers to the unknown.

Like most children under two, Jacob is wired to fearlessly explore his world. Now that he’s conquered the floor, he’s inquisitive about life above the 6-inch mark. He recently took his first steps and it was amazing to watch him take two steps, fall, and get back up, then take three more steps, crash, and hurt himself (like war-zone journalists we let him struggle to capture the events on camera). It was all a wondrous example of his innate motivation to succeed.

My oldest son is not quite so fearless. As Benjamin has learned about the world around him, he’s developed concerns about a massive octopus from The Little Mermaid and strangers who pat him on the head. But he’s still hellbent to investigate his environment.

A couple of months ago, Benjamin enviously watched two friends swing on the monkey bars with ease. He tried a few times and collapsed in a heap of tears and frustration, “I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it anymore.” I didn’t say anything, but his hands were getting raw and, were I in his shoes, I would’ve given it all up for a root-beer float. But he went back at it until his little arms looked like they were gonna fall off. It took him days at school, the park, and our backyard before he finally succeeded. The look on his face was unadulterated joy and pride, “I’m Spider-Man!” he exclaimed.

But he wasn’t finished. A day later, his friend Isabel flew across the rungs like a Cirque de Soliel pro. Benjamin stomped in a rage prompted by a tinge of gender competition, “It’s not fair! She can’t go that fast! She’s a girl! Why can’t I do that?” But in the next few weeks, he got so good on the bars that now other kids look to him as the model “monkey.”

Benjamin and Jacob’s relentlessness to explore extends to a number of pursuits, especially the verbal. Jacob sits in his carseat for hours practicing his consonants. Benjamin scrawls his name across every conceivable writing surface in search of the perfect “B” and a forward-facing “N.” But their behavior is not rare—at least for children.

Somewhere along the line, grown-ups replace experimentation with cautiousness. For most of my adult life, I slipped into a pattern of backing off challenges. I’d allowed myself to say, so what if I can’t shoot a three-pointer or get past the first few pages of my novel?

Through my children’s example, I’m starting to loosen up. They seem to revel in just trying things out. Why can’t I? I’ve never been handy, but now, I attempt to fix fences and assemble Rescue Hero Command Centers. It takes me hours and sometimes Benjamin laughs, “Jake Justice doesn’t go in the helicopter, you diaper head!” But in getting in touch with my childlike explorer side, I’m not only having fun, I may even be showing my kids that the effort — in and of itself — never stops being rewarding.

In contemplating the many New Year’s resolutions we might endeavor to fulfill, let’s follow one that perhaps covers them all. Let’s revel in the practice of being good parents and allowing our kids to be good livers. Let’s allow our children’s natural instinct to help us enjoy the beauty of a simple imperative — try.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man | Leave a comment

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