And the Beat Goes On

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

I’m battling a bad back, bone spurs in my heel, and a creaky knee. By looking at me, you’d never know I was the John Travolta of middle school. Really, I even took a disco class in 6th grade and got to “Night Fever” with Tracey Singer (hello, Tracey, wherever you are).

My dancing roots go back to those childhood Saturdays I spent watching TV, copying the guys on American Bandstand and learning to jump around the furniture like Gene Kelly in The Pirate.

I didn’t exactly broadcast my preoccupation to elementary-school buddies. When I did dance in public, at camp shows or religious school events, I got called names that rhymed with wussy and hag. You know, the usual “enlightened” young male reactions. With macho preservation in mind, I stuck to more socially acceptable activities of playing hardcore dodge ball and recounting episodes of Kung Fu.

As disco rose in time for adolescence, I found freedom in courting girls with spins and half-splits. I thought about taking formal lessons, but I once again became too insecure about the unmanliness of it. That and the fact my dancing skills plateaued and were best left for household performances like Tom Cruise’s Risky Business underwear scene.

Nothing can bring back the joy of my youthful hoofing experiences. Nothing, except watching my sons take pride in their own happy feet.

From the time our kids were little, my wife and I would put on music, particularly this multicultural CD called Dance Around the World, and bop about the house with the boys. They would leap onto the coffee table to wiggle with abandon and giggle at my dancing foolishness.

When Benjamin was in first grade, he and his friend Nicky took dance classes at school. It was those two little guys and eight girls — nice odds, though Benjamin was oblivious to that at the time. He loved the experience and dressed all hip-hop for his big performance, which featured his surprisingly coordinated footwork in two-person and larger ensemble dances.

After the show, the pretty teacher walked up to me and said, “Where did Benjamin get his groove?”

I tried to act cool and answered, “I used to have rhythm.”

But Benjamin fell into his own self-consciousness as he got older and stopped dancing. He even made fun of his younger brother, Jacob, who grooved like a combination of Usher and Baryshnikov during our house parties.

“You dance like a girl,” Benjamin said.

“No, he doesn’t, and you danced just like that not long ago,” I responded.

“Other people are going to make fun of him,” Benjamin replied.

“That’s their problem,” I said. “And it shouldn’t be yours.”

Despite the brotherly ridicule, Jacob joined a pop-dance class early last year. He learned everything from breakdancing to High School Musical-style numbers. As I watched Jacob count to himself to stay on the beat and dramatically slide across the floor during his class performance, I was flush with pride — and falling into the very trap for which I scolded Benjamin. I worried that Jacob looked a little feminine and would have to endure the mocking of other kids.

While I worked on rising above my concerns, I got help from an unexpected source.

“Mom, Dad, can I join the pop-dance class?” Benjamin said just before second semester last year.

“I thought you said dancing was girlie,” I answered.

“Well, it’s a lot of hip-hop, so it’s OK,” he offered. “And my friends are doing it, too.”

So, the wheel turned, and dancing became boy-approved in my house. For the year-end show, Jacob — dressed like an ‘80s rapper in a torn t-shirt and bandana — was an acrobatic marvel. Attired in his usual clothes, Benjamin was more subdued as he moved with his posse of friends.

This year, the boogie continues as Jacob takes pop-dance again, and Benjamin (now in middle school) joins pals at a studio to keep it going. My five year old, Ari, is influenced by them and loves to rock out to Kanye West, even in his car seat.

In a complicated world in which dance is given few outlets, especially with gender pressures, I’m happy to see my sons let the beat run its natural course. Kids know what to do with music. We adults need to help clear the social and physical space for them to strut their stuff.

Just so long as we don’t try to school them with our old Travolta moves. Trust me, I’m still limping from the last time I tried.

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Predatory Birds and Killer Bees

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

I thought I’d be good at explaining the birds and the bees to my children. My own parents left the heavy lifting to a read-aloud of the book Where Do I Come From? when I was 11. So I planned to customize the lessons for each kid’s personality, giving the right information without overdoing it.

Based on the first three talks, I’ve been a disaster.

“Benjamin knows what the ‘s’ word is,” my wife told me four years ago on one fateful evening.

“You mean the bad word for ‘poopie’?” I said.

“No, I think they’ve been giggling about ‘sex’ at school,” she responded. “You have to talk to him now.”

“Why me?” I groaned. “He’s eight years old. Isn’t this too soon?”

“If you don’t do it, his friends will, and he’ll get the wrong information,” she reasoned.

So, I sat Benjamin at the kitchen table with every intention of being a wise teacher.

“Do you know what sex is?” I opened.

Benjamin fought a smile and shook his head.

“You know that boys have penises and girls…have…vag…”

Then I whinnied like a ticklish horse. Benjamin laughed so hard, he fell off his chair.

It took me a while to regain my composure, but I managed to frame sex as something that happens when people love each other and want to have a baby. I saved the more complicated details for years later.

For his part, Benjamin emitted a few “eewww’s” that assured me he was far from sexual activity. However, he did have one question.

 “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because we heard you were using the ‘s’ word,” I said.

“You mean the bad word for ‘poopie’?” he giggled.

Later, I told my wife I would never trust her interpretation of anything ever again.

Flash forward to the 2009-2010 parenting season, which has been punctuated by two sex talks.

The first one involved talking to Benjamin (11 at the time) about his changing body and view of the opposite gender. Once again, Benjamin was tight-lipped. So, wouldn’t you know, I pulled out a copy of Where Do I Come From? and read it to him. I’ve never seen the kid so engrossed in illustrations in my life.

Overall, it was a good introduction for the shorter talks we’ve since had regarding girls and the emotions that accompany adolescence.

Then, there was the dialogue I had with Jacob (8) after dinner one night.

“Daddy, I know what sex is, it’s when a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina and she gets pregnant and that’s where the baby comes out, out of her vagina.”

Yes, it was all one sentence.

“Wendy!” I yelled across the house. “Can you handle this one?”

When she came in, Jacob hit her with the information.

“Mommy, I know what sex is, it’s when a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina and she gets pregnant and that’s where the baby comes out, out of her vagina.”

Wendy took one look at me and said, “He’s a boy. You’re a boy. Talk to him.”

And she scrammed.

Jacob beamed at me from the couch. I sat down with him.

“Do you have any questions?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t.

“Does it have to happen in a bed, or can you do it standing up, or on a table?” he rattled off.

I wondered if it was wrong to offer him ice cream just to retract the question.

“Most people do it in a bed,” I said, praying he wouldn’t ask how his mother and I conceived him.

“When I want to do it, do I just bump into the girl and say ‘sorry,’ then she’s pregnant?” he said.

“It takes a little longer,” I muttered.

“Does it hurt?” he wondered.

“It’s nice, usually…where did all of these thoughts come from?” I countered.

“I heard some of it from Franklin, but also from Rain,” he admitted. “Rain said if that’s what happens, she just wants to adopt.”

The comment was good for a laugh, but I cautioned him that it’s best to have conversations about sex with Mommy or Daddy since we have the most facts.

“Can we talk some more about naked stuff,” he continued.

“Not tonight,” I said with a grin. “But make sure you ask Mommy all about it tomorrow.”

That was fair. It takes two to make a baby, so there might as well be two making a mess of explaining how it happens.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Love and Courtship, Sex Ed | Leave a comment

Subtext

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

In my youngest son’s preschool, the teachers furnish the cubbies with slips of paper that say, “Ask me about…” followed by a tidbit regarding each child’s activities.

One day at pick-up, I asked Ari about building a fort with his buddies.

“How did you know I did that?” Ari inquired guardedly.

“I read it on the paper from your teachers,” I replied.

At this, my son broke into tears, “I don’t want to share all my secrets!”

Because I prize the uninhibited daily accounts I usually get from Ari and my loquacious middle child, Jacob (8), this was a serious blow I blame on the influence of my eldest boy. Benjamin (11) keeps secrets better than a Cold War spy. During countless car rides and dinners, he’s had the same response whenever we’ve asked him what he did for his day: “Nothing.”

In the early years, we wised up and got the scoop from his instructors, other parents, and his friends.

“Benjamin had to sit on the rug in front of Ms. Renetzky,” one girl told us about him in kindergarten.

Luckily, he’s been a largely low-maintenance child, who laughs readily, still cuddles a little while watching TV with the family, and shares his iPod downloads with us. Frankly, we like him a lot.

But as he climbs the ladder of adolescence, that penchant for saying little is driving my wife and me bonkers. Making matters more complicated are the hints from other parents about Benjamin’s burgeoning interest in girls and leaks from teachers about his lapses in diligence.

We’ve tried to crack his Keanu Reeves affect with face-to-face conversation. I’ve had several talks about the birds and the bees without so much as a flutter of feedback. To no avail, I’ve tried humor and bellowing to learn what he does while he’s at school or hanging out with buddies.

This is why we’ve begun to rely on the very mechanism that makes Benjamin tick – technology. We eventually gave in to a cell phone under the condition that we had full access to monitor it. And while we’ve had our trials of making sure he’s safe from wayward adults and overly mature contemporaries, we’ve become fans of this device because it’s given us a remarkably effective means of communicating with our thoroughly modern son.

Here’s a sample of the texts we’ve discovered our son has sent and what we’ve done in response:

“Don’t tell anyone, but Jimmy likes you a little.” This led to a discussion about everything from what “like” means to an 11 year old to what you should do if you and your best friend “like” the same young lady. It also forced me to learn that kids no longer call someone “cute” because it means they “like” another person a bit more than I heretofore thought “like” meant.

“My parents took my phone away. That’s fine because I can still use the computer.” We took the computer away too. The crucial benefit of my child’s attachment to his technology is that I can take it all away to teach him some lesson about being kinder to his family members and doing his chores.

“I just forgot to tell you about the D in math.” Actually, this was a response from our son that came to us when we texted him from the back-to-school night presentation. We had discovered we should have seen the five-week report card that afternoon. Using a text from the very site of his ill-fated arithmetic results made it hard for him to conjure any answer but the truth.

Not all the texting is negative. It’s good for our son to know he has yet to completely outfox us. We’re swift and savvy enough to learn the texting lingo and ins-and-outs of its usage to make sure he acts his best. Even if he gets a few texts by us, he knows we’re watching, so it makes him think twice about what he writes.

Secondly, getting more adept with our thumbs has allowed my wife and me to send our son reminders about his schedule and to pull more information out of him than we thought possible. It also gives us conversation starters to get specific details on his relationships, interests, and plans.

He actually thinks we’re not so square because we can communicate this way, which is a nice byproduct for a dad who still questions the attractiveness of wearing pants without a belt.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Tweens | 1 Comment

Playing House

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Almost two years ago, my son got married. It was a private affair. Just Ari, his beloved Maddie, and a few friends. After the simple ceremony, the couple and their guests sat down to a meal of fish sticks and carrots. No limousine picked up the newlyweds. Instead of going on a honeymoon, the couple — their shirts stained with grape juice, their cheeks smudged with washable paints — went home with their respective carpools.

It wasn’t until that night, after Maddie’s mom Sharon called my wife to share the news, that I learned about the marriage. Preparing to read a bedtime story to Ari (three-and-a-half years old at the time), I inquired about the wedding.

“Did something special happen at school today?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, Maddie and I got married,” he said matter of factly.

I choked back a chuckle. Ari and Maddie had been “dating” for close to two years. The months before their betrothal was filled with napping side by side and impassioned jealousies regarding how often they played blocks with other suitors.

“Why did you choose her?” I wondered.

“Because I love her and she loves me,” he said. “Now please read the book.”

Ari leaned on me, stuck his thumb in his mouth and his blanket under his arm. This tow-headed preschooler thought of himself as a married man. Who was I to judge?

I often find myself wondering how I got here myself. When did I go from being five years old, playing house with Kathy Kincaid from across the street, to a man in his 40s with a wife, three sons, a home, a job, and the other accessories of a grown-up life?

On the rare occasion when I’m alone with nothing to do and everyone else asleep, I sit on the couch and ponder all of this. I survey the strewn sweatshirts, game pieces, and orphaned socks my boys frequently forget to put away. I stare at the photographs on the walls and shelves capturing the memories of amusement parks and vacations. Then I go to the rooms of my sons just to listen to them breathe.

I reach my own bedroom to see my wife barely visible under the covers. Her piles of graded papers and correspondence from the committees she’s involved in spread over the nightstand.

“We forgot to sign the field-trip form for Jacob,” she mumbles throatily before drifting off again.

I sign the form and climb beneath the blankets. I stare at this woman. Her hair is disheveled; a slight frown knits her eyebrows. This is the person I married with whom I have built a life full of all the people and experiences I once only dreamed about.

There are plenty of times when I have shortness of breath, weighed down by myriad responsibilities. Occasionally, I succumb to the fantasy flashes of writing great novels in a solitary mountain cabin or of a playboy lifestyle of being surrounded by exotic women and powerful men admiring of my status.

Then there are the real moments when I know I am damn lucky to have Wendy. She’s smart, sexy, strong, and incredibly tolerant of my downfalls. But what always strikes me about our marriage is our mutual interest in working our butts off to make the partnership grow. We have plenty of leaks and holes in our marital fortress, yet we continue to patch them up while adding new rooms to labor and play in.

Our sons learn a lot about the nuts and bolts of marriage because we hide little from them. This may have helped Ari when he found out Maddie had moved to another school. He cried, but took heart in Wendy’s promise to help him phone and e-mail the woman he calls “my wife.”

Two years into the relationship, Ari maintains his unique affection for Maddie. Before his fifth birthday party, I caught him ransacking his dresser drawers.

“I have to find the right clothes to wear for Maddie,” he explained, worried since he had not seen her in a couple of months.

When Sharon brought her daughter to the door, Ari smiled broadly and guided Maddie into the party to show her around.

“She spent an hour picking out the right dress because she wanted to look good for her husband,” Sharon said.

And so it was. Two little people acting like a committed, eternally excited married couple. May they be as blessed as their parents.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Love and Courtship, Marriage | Leave a comment

Dirty

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

As we pack for a day on the soccer fields, my wife looks at my clothes and shakes her head.

“You know those shorts will not be khaki colored when you get home,” she says.

“I have to match them with my assistant coach’s jersey,” I respond, half-hurt she’s not fully admiring me in my uniform.

“You’re such a geek,” she confirms.

So we pile into the minivan with the ice chest, soccer balls, and three sons all gleaming in their various team colors.

At the field, nary a blade of grass can be seen. The city has been miserly conserving water so what remains are playing surfaces resembling the vestiges of a scorched earth campaign by a rival park organization. Worse yet, the wind picks up and blows mini dirt twisters.

“A boulder just landed in my eye,” Ari (5) wails in the middle of his match.

“It’s just a speck of dust,” I yell back, hoping the tiny tornadoes don’t throw a Dorothy or Toto at my kids.

Later, as we trudge over the barren prairie toward the next game, we see our friend, Dave, who coaches his daughters’ group of 10 year olds.

“The other day my girls didn’t want to run on the field because it had just rained,” he explained. “So I picked up some mud, wiped it on my face, and said, ‘See, it doesn’t hurt!’”

We all laugh knowingly, then continue our grimy experience. After three games amid the thick grit and occasional mud puddle, my shorts are indeed milk-chocolate brown and my kids are streaked like farmers in an onion patch.

And I like it.

At a time in which Americans have gone clean crazy, scrubbing ourselves sterile with anti-bacterial soaps and sanitizers, it’s a joy to get dirty. When my family gets home on a soccer day, we do shower and drop the grubby uniforms in the wash. But putting in a good day of throwing our bodies into the elements feels great.

I’m not advocating for a lack of hand washing or sneezing into our sleeves. I want to help keep my kids and the general population free from swine flu and other airborne illnesses. Yet I do think that in looking at the world as a war zone of germs, we’re taking a lot of fun out of childhood. We’re losing too much by going overboard with sanitation.

These days, many of us fear our kids will transform into Charlie Brown’s buddy Pigpen should we allow them to dig in the soil for bugs, fool around with paints, or (as infants) fiddle with their food. Over the years, I’ve been prone to blood-pressure surges upon seeing disorder and have discouraged my children’s normal, but not harmful, tendencies toward messiness. Because of this, my kids have been shy to make mud floors in shoe boxes for school dioramas or get bicycle grease on their hands despite a desire to learn how their vehicle works.

In his first two years of life, my middle son, Jacob, liked to put everything from the ground in his mouth. He ingested rocks and pebbles from the park, sand from the beach, and spare change from the sidewalk. Aside from the fear that he would choke on the objects, my OCD tendencies caused me to imagine Pokemon-like germ characters mounting bacterial attacks on his immune system. We tried everything to keep him from mouthing things and even learned about a condition called pica (or pika) which causes people to crave dirt to alleviate iron deficiency. He didn’t have pica. What he had was a natural curiosity in the world and a habit of using his mouth as one of his tools.

Six years later, Jacob thankfully shows no permanent damage from his early childhood earth consumption. In fact, there’s even a whole legion of researchers who have found that kids need exposure to germs to strengthen their immunity to various illnesses. They even suggest that (yuck) having tiny worms in our digestive tracts are good for our long-term health. This is why these scientists recommend keeping dogs and cats around for casual but fairly safe contact with dirt.

I will likely continue to struggle with my tendency for cleanliness but plan to let my kids get filthy. I will draw the line at Benjamin (11) and Jacob continuing to use their shirts as napkins, but I vow to revel in Ari coming home from preschool looking like he wrestled an overgrown paintbrush in a sandbox. This year, I’m keeping a dirty mind.

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

Itchy and Scratchy

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

With dozens of other anxious parents, my wife and I wait for our son to return from a month at sleep-away camp.

“It’s good for him to be independent,” I rationalize to a nearby dad. “The kid could barely pour his own milk before he started overnight camp two years ago.”

“The last two weeks were awful,” Wendy says to a fellow mom. “But the last few days actually hurt because we missed him so much.”

“Are you kidding?” another mother chimes in. “It was such a pleasure to get a break from parenting a preadolescent for a month.”

Wendy and I smile knowingly. Yes, there were days when we enjoyed the absence of our son’s random crankiness. Still, a month without our usually sweet-natured first born was too much.

The buses rumble toward the lot and all but the most jaded parents cheer its approach. The children wave wildly from the windows. As each bus parks, Wendy and I try to see which one our son will disembark from, jostling with other parents like crowd members at a rock concert.

We finally find him. He looks tanned, tired, and so happy to be home.

Back at our house, Wendy takes his duffel bag of grimy clothes straight to the laundry room while Benjamin heads to his room. He flops down and sighs heavily.

“I missed my bed,” he exhales dreamily.

Over the next week, our son tells tales of outdoor adventures, late-night chatter, and deep friendships he made during his month of living in Never Never Land.

But Peter Pan references are not the only things flying around my child’s head, as we soon learn when we get a phone call from our friend Karmi.

“Jaime has insect eggs in his hair,” she proclaims.

Benjamin is with my mom-in-law that day, so we call her to check his head.

“I don’t see anything in his hair,” she says. “But, tell me, was the other little boy dirty?”

Brushing aside generational misunderstandings – and the reality that Jaime is hygienically sound — of what really causes lice infestations, we immediately re-check Benjamin. When I pull back his follicles, I notice the animated activity of several winged bugs.

Along with lifelong memories, my son has returned from camp with lice.

Somehow, in seven days of walking around our (relatively) clean house and taking more regular showers than his one every two weeks that he did at camp, Benjamin failed to notice his noggin was a playground for tiny insects. I look more carefully at my boy’s scalp and notice his skin is raw, even bleeding a little from constant scratching.

“My head has been kinda itchy,” he confesses as Wendy looks for herself. She freaks out as if we’ve been invaded by miniature monsters from the third ring of hell.

After calming down a bit, Wendy and I set to work on the relentlessly complicated task of ridding our house of lice. It turns out that all of us have bugs or eggs living in our hair following a week of Benjamin hugging us and sitting around the house. Because my wife looks at this crisis like a platoon leader, she marches all of us through a regimen of medicated shampooing, hot water laundering, and top-to-bottom house scouring.

At the advice of our pediatrician and friends whose kids have come home from the same camp with a similar scalp affliction, we then call in the heavy artillery, an expert from a company mystically called the Hair Whisperer. This woman comes to our house armed with a variety of combs as well as a cocktail of tea-tree oil and other secret ingredients. She proceeds to nit-pick her way through each of us, rooting out the enemies and extinguishing them in bowls of scalding water.

For more than a week, we scrub everything and check our heads for return attacks. Wendy and I have to juggle our summer work schedules because the kids cannot go to day camp until they are lice-free. Barbers refuse to touch us. Friends politely decline playdates and dinner plans, waiting until we are given the all-clear.

Mercifully, our follicle fiasco ends and Wendy and I sit with our big boy, the scent of tea-tree oil lingering in the air. We go over next summer’s plan to shave and disinfect Benjamin before he steps foot in our house.

“But we love having you back from camp, Benjamin,” I say.

“I miss my friends,” he responds wistfully, then laughs to himself. “Just not the little ones with the wings.”

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

Caveboy Speaks

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

For years, I lived with a prehistoric boy. He showed signs of modernity in his looks (no excess body hair, unless you count the shaggy haircut) and with his choice of tools (made with circuitry rather than flint), but he spoke in grunts.

“How was school, Benjamin?” I’d ask each day at pickup.

“Nnhhh,” he’d growl, like an extra from Encino Man.

I got the same responses for just about any question I dared call into his cave. It didn’t matter if I was asking about his friends or what his latest reading material involved, I couldn’t get a polysyllable out of him.

As is my usual way, I figured there was something wrong with me. After all, my son was only an elementary school student, too young to develop adolescent surliness or a calculated agenda that warranted using the silent treatment. When he was with his buddies, he never shut up. He even earned a couple of “Needs Improvement” remarks on his report cards for talking too much in class. Who was this kid and why, when he was around me, did he clam up like a low-level mobster getting worked over in a police interrogation room?

It must have been the way I asked questions, or when I asked them, or the kinds of questions. So, on occasion, I tried inquiring about Pokémon. In those cases, I got more vociferous responses … only I couldn’t understand a damn thing he was talking about between the multitude of strange “mon” names and obtuse game rules.

At that point, I pretty much gave up, assuming that I would have to wait until Benjamin was in college or a family man himself before I could have a legitimate talk with him.

Then, fourth grade happened and my young Neanderthal went verbally ape. Perhaps, in getting a little older and wiser, my 9-and-a-half-year-old suddenly found more in common with me. It was as if he realized I wasn’t a boring adult, fit only for hounding him about washing his hair for more than five seconds or eating with a fork (another example of his caveman habits).

Now, when I ask him about his school day, he responds in paragraphs. The newly verbose Benjamin tells me the slapstick jokes his friends concoct, what he learns about plant growth, even his running time for the race he does every so often in P.E.

In past school semesters, the only verbal interaction about homework involved Benjamin whining and snapping at me whenever I tried to get him to do the assignments. These days, he likes to discuss American history and report back on the solutions to the math riddles his class figures out. My favorite homework discussions happen when I help him study for his weekly spelling test. I make up sample sentences that relate to our lives and he laughs at the corniness of most of them, such as, “Benjamin thinks the whole world revolves around him.” He works until he gets them all right, which often takes us extra rounds on the car ride to school. Sure, it’s a little nerdy, but we’re bonding.

School isn’t the only topic that has Benjamin buzzing with me. He used to tune out when I talked about jazz, but now he asks to hear my old Keith Jarrett CDs and makes comments like, “Did Dizzy Gillespie really have cheeks like a blowfish?” In the past, he found pro sports boring, but now he recommends ways I can improve my fantasy baseball team. And he never liked deli food until recently, when I took him to one of my old haunts for pastrami. I still don’t believe he craves the grub; it’s the opportunity for conversation he seems to enjoy.

I know that this is precious time with Benjamin. Soon enough, adolescent hormones will kick in and he will not want to prattle on with me as much. My hope is that this year of chatter and connecting will help us pave a familiar path so that, when he does want to chew the fat, he can just head up the road to me. I’ll always be here. Ready to talk with my son.

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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

Odd Man In

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

“Jacob’s got to do his morning pee,” Wendy says, zipping up a lunchbox and grabbing waffles from the toaster.

Eyeing the clock, which shouts “You’re gonna be late for school,” I shepherd my five-year-old to the toilet.

“I can’t do it,” Jacob whimpers.

“Relax,” I tell him, using a voice so strained a Zen master would feel nervous.

Benjamin (age eight) runs in, nudges Jacob aside and takes a leak, putting even more pressure on my middle child.

After Benjamin skidaddles, I cheer Jacob on, “Let’s go pee!” when little naked Ari pads into the bathroom. I assume he’s there as a spectator so I forget about him.

“Go pee! Go pee! Go pee!” I chant and — sure enough — pee fountains out. Warmth bathes my foot. Giggling wafts to my ears.

“Ari!” I shout as my toddler showers my shoe with a firefighter’s gusto.

Feeling the wetness reach my socks, my frustration melts into laughter. I turn from Jacob, who finally tinkles (in the proper receptacle), kiss Ari’s proud face. The way my littlest child sees it, anything the big boys can do, he can do better.

One of my worries for my third child was that he would get left in the dust of the older kids. For much of his early life, Ari was schlepped to the other boys’ activities and restrained by a high chair or stroller as his siblings caromed around freely. Adding to his helplessness, he got sick a lot. In between countless incidents of cold and flu, Ari endured a hospital stay for a respiratory infection and surgery for ear infections.

But, in the half-year leading up to his second birthday, Ari developed into a family superstar. Armed with a head of cottony blonde hair (in a family of darker-hued tresses) and vibrant blue-green eyes, our smallest child does everything louder, faster, and funnier than his siblings did at the same age.

When he wants to be noticed at mealtime, Ari wears his bowl on his head. If his siblings fight over the remote control, he snags it, squints at Mommy or Daddy – in his attempt to wink – and tries to tune into his own show. Should he get bored at a concert, he wanders around, hugging strangers (under our supervision) with the gusto of an uncle who’s just come over from the old country.

Being the littlest person in a family of five never daunts Ari. In fact, the bigger the group the more he shines. At a minor-league baseball game, while a dozen other children begged sweetly for practice balls, Ari high-fived every pitcher in the bullpen until he got a ball. Having no idea what kind of cool souvenir he earned, he was just pleased to have outsmarted the other kids.

In true youngest child fashion, Ari imitates everything his older brothers do, then improves on it. If he notices Jacob fighting us to put on clothes, Ari grabs an outfit and attempts to dress himself. When I ask a reluctant Benjamin to scrub his teeth at night, Ari scrambles to the sink to use a spare toothbrush. Seeing Benjamin and Jacob whine as they don school bags, our little toddler disappears into a closet and emerges with a backpack, properly strapped to his shoulders.

Although Ari thinks he’s ready to join his brothers at school, he does have to work on one particular aspect of his big personality. He’s kind of a thug. Despite being in the fifth-percentile in height, he steals his daycare friends’ toys and shoves kids down during play. While this behavior works well when he wants to retaliate against a roughhousing brother, he comes off as a kind of “ant bully” among his peers. Making matters worse, he does all of this with a smile that’s more “This power thing actually works” than “Get out of my way, you worthless knave!”

I’ve seen a lot of nice, quiet third children who go about their business, resigned to their last-place finish in the family race. And while we’re working on re-channeling his daycare intimidation tactics, we couldn’t be more thankful that Ari chooses to take his place alongside his brothers.

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

Let’s Hug It Out

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

When I was 15, one perfectly fine day was ruined by a hug. As I was running out the door to meet my morning carpool, my mom stopped me with, “Did you forget to hug your mother?”

I relented, fighting all the uptightness my adolescent attitude exuded, and she embraced me with the conviction a person usually reserves for airport departures. Having just recently applied her perfume, Mom not only planted a kiss on my cheek, but also transferred four ounces of Ralph Lauren fragrance to me.

From the carpool until I reached my first class, I suffered intense teenage anxiety over the prospect that someone would think I intentionally spritzed myself to smell like a fresh bouquet of roses. Considering that I attended an all-boys’ school, the stakes were pretty high. I tried relentlessly to erase the aroma, wiping my face with my hands, even resorting to spitting on my palm to neutralize the aroma.

Everything went fine until we had to write an in-class essay. In the quiet, Steve Weisburd picked up his head and sniffed the air.

“Is that Lauren perfume I’m smelling?”

I sank into my seat, hoping to melt into the plastic of the chair.

I survived that day without detection, though I still can’t forgive my mom for turning me into a department-store perfume counter. What I can’t fault her for was the hug. Because of the hugs of my mom and other relatives, I was blessed with an extra measure of love and security.

Today, I don’t transfer cologne to my sons, but I do hug them a lot. From the time of their births, I have held them, kissed them and pinched their chubby legs. As they’ve grown, I’ve cherished the times they’ve come up to hold my hand while walking, climbed onto my lap when tired, or run to me for a bear hug upon my return home at the end of a long day. My wife and I have also let the boys crawl into our bed for morning cuddles (it’s gotten more crowded with five of us and they fight to be next to at least one of us).

The general love standard in our home has our boys hugging and kissing each other when they say goodbye in the mornings, reunite in the evenings, or whenever the spirit moves them. With extended family and friends, affection can sometimes be tricky, depending on my kids’ moods or familiarity with the person. They’re outlining boundaries that may insult a few people on occasion, but I know they need the space to figure it all out.

For my part, I am given to occasional concerns about the boundaries of affection. My wife’s expressions of adoration for my sons have come easier because she’s a woman. Coming from a generation whose fathers often saw physical warmth as unmanly, I fight the lingering feelings of discomfort at showing love as my children mature.

With my oldest almost 9 years old, he’s gotten to that point when he doesn’t want a big hug and a smack on the cheek before he goes off to school. Sometimes he just dashes to the bus, forgetting to do more than wave goodbye. I feel like such a wimp in my disappointment. I want him to grow up, but not at the expense of familial closeness.

The good thing is that, at night in front of the TV or while reading books, he still snuggles up to me. This is great, but then I wonder if I’m allowing him to be too much of a little boy. The feeling is mostly due to my social self-consciousness, which asks, at what age is it not OK to cuddle with my son? Will he still lay his head on my shoulder when he’s 16 … 21 … 40?

My hope is that he will. No matter what my kids’ ages, I will never revert to handshakes and slaps on the back. As my children grow older, I will keep hugging them, kissing them and throwing my arm around them, because they will always need more than just the words of Dad’s love.

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