Take This With My Compliments

By Gregory Keer

My wife and I had modest ambitions about decorating our home before our children arrived. Given our overstuffed work lives, we wanted our home to have clean lines, an emphasis on negative space, and blues and greens to give a feeling of serenity.

By the time our third child reached elementary school, it was clear he had different design ideas. The clean lines have been replaced by shelves full of outsized Lego masterpieces, the negative spaces filled with craft materials and handy tools, and the blues and greens obscured by the wild patterns of fabrics employed in making countless handmade ski hats and movie-night blankets. Serenity? No, that went away in not having one tabletop, cabinet, or couch free of clutter.

“Unless you put some of this junk back in your room, I’m taking it all to the garage,” I said to my son one day in a fit of fastidiousness.

“I promise I’ll put it away tomorrow,” he replied, not looking up from the newly-assembled cardboard doghouse he was installing next to our couch.

As I stared at the giant canine box with an irritated look, my wife, who has developed a disturbingly higher tolerance for messiness, pulled me aside.

“It’s a pretty good piece of work, isn’t it?” she reasoned.

“It’s great,” I said sarcastically. “Let’s do the whole room in storage containers.”

Ari heard this, a tad hurt. “If you don’t like it, I can take it down — even though I worked on it all day.”

Feeling sheepish — which happens so often I might as well join a wooly herd in New Zealand — I walked over to inspect the structure. Indeed, it was surprisingly well designed. It had a geometrically balanced pitched roof, a circular window that used a clear plastic take-out top instead of glass, and an accurately measured opening perfect for our small dog. It was even painted with a cool blue that satisfied my color preference. Frankly, I was so impressed by my 12-year-old’s ingenuity, I forgot my stuffy intolerance to his messy creations.

“This is cool, kiddo.”

To this, my son nodded imperceptibly and walked away.

I turned to my wife, “What was that? I said I liked it.”

“Truthfully, after hearing you complain all the time, the compliment gets a little lost.”

So, I went to my son’s room to talk to him where he was already busy playing around with some string and an old climbing carabiner to create a pulley. He did something similar at sleepaway camp where he made a system connected to his top bunk to pick up dropped items below.

“Sorry, kiddo. I really do like the doghouse.”

“OK,” he said, still monotoned.

“I’m proud of all your clever stuff,” I continued, gesturing at the new pulley.

The kid shrugged. And I realized, this was more than just being immunized by my complaints. This was part of a pattern occurring in other instances. I would go to his orchestra concerts and praise his trombone work, only to get a mumbled “Thanks.” I would see his report card and remark on the improvement in math, followed by his “I should do better” response.

What I came to realize was that my son honestly did not know how to take a compliment. Moreover, neither did my two elder sons or, for that matter, most of the high-school students I taught.

While I haven’t delved too deeply into the psychological research that explains this phenomenon with today’s kids, I do have thoughts on why I am making a goal out of giving my sons a different kind of gift this holiday season. I want to teach them how to take a compliment.

Part one is something I refer to a lot regarding my parenting habits. That is, I have to be better about reducing my criticisms and targeting my constructive advice so that, when I do give a compliment, it is not drowned out by negativity.

Part two is giving a proper compliment. In a generation of parents who have given out more than our share of participation trophies and praise for doing basic human things like pooping and making a rudimentary finger-painting, I need to focus my positive feedback on achievements that require serious effort. This includes taking risks by trying difficult tasks, standing up for friends when others won’t, and hitting a tough high note on a really difficult instrument like a trombone. The key is specificity, citing a particular action, and not just saying, “You’re great!” Kids trust a compliment and actually know how to build off of it when they know exactly where they have gone right.

Part three is trickier and that involves coaching my kids to receive praise with grace and appreciation that someone is taking the time to notice them. We all crave validation, but if we don’t make eye contact with our complimenter and drink it in when it’s served to us, especially since it gets more rare as we get older, then we will self-inflict more ego suffering than we should.

Although I still plan to give my boys a couple of material gifts I hope they’ll like, my true hope is that I can help them accept the gift of a compliment and, most of all, teach them how to savor praise as a validation for the hard-working, unique people they are. If I can do this just a little, I can live with all the messiness my boys can wreak upon my living room.

© 2018 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Posted in Blog, Columns by Family Man, Holidays, Perspective | Leave a comment

The One That Ends With Hope

By Gregory Keer

How’s this for a new picture book? It’s the story of two children who play on the same playground, learn in the same school, eat at the same restaurants. They each have caring parents. One morning, while out walking on a Saturday, one of the children sees the other walk into a synagogue with her family. The first child asks his parents if they can do the same.

“No, they are different from us,” the parents respond. ”Those are bad people. They make friends with bad people.”

The first child says, “No, she is my friend. She’s not bad.”

The parents shake their heads, “We are telling you they are. Do not play with her anymore.”

Years later, the first child has grown to his middle life. He has learned many reasons why the parents believe Jewish people are bad. Life has been hard for the once-little boy. Jobs have been hard to find. Others have jobs and seem happier. These others have different beliefs and backgrounds, but they all live near him. Some of them are Jews. His parents have died, so he has looked for guidance from others who believe as his parents taught him. These others have power and tell him the ones who have what he should have should be removed from his neighborhood.

One day, a Saturday, the man goes to a synagogue. A little girl has just entered with her parents. The man follows, pulls out a large gun, the kind that shoots many bullets very fast, and shoots everyone he can.

When he is done. And people are dead or screaming in pain, he peers to his right and sees the little girl, still alive. She lays next to her parents, now dead. She looks back at him in fear and confusion.

The man meets her eyes. He feels…

He feels…what? As I write, I do not know what to fill in there to complete the sentence. Does he feel good, bad, a combination? Now that he has done what he has done, does he feel better, worse, proud, horrified?

I must say that I do not know what to write that will make sense as an ending to the overly simplified story I wrote above. But I am trying. I am trying. I am trying.

In the aftermath of the massacre committed on the Jewish Sabbath on October 27, 2018, in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I feel many things. One of them is sick. Sick because hatred has caused this. Sick because people from all sides, all beliefs, are arguing about the reasons this happened. Sick because I am a Jew, raising my children as Jews, and I fear for their lives. Sick because I fear for the lives of anyone who is the target of murderers who kill those who are different from them. Sick because one of the reasons these Jews were killed was because they reached out to help refugees who needed assistance. Sick because this is my country, a nation where equality and kindness have so long won out because this nation was founded on these principles. Sick because many of our country’s leaders are teaching us to hate, praising those who hate, encouraging those who hate.

But as I write these words, I write to ease the sickness I feel. To make room for a way forward so that I can protect my children and help steer the parents of anyone who will read these words towards something better.

It is easy to hate. It is hard to love. It is easy to find reasons to push others aside and even kill them. It is hard to bring others close to us and even hug them, help them. But which provides something that lasts, something to build from? We must keep asking ourselves long-term questions, not giving ourselves short-term answers. The long ones provide hard roads toward life, understanding, and love. The short ones, those that sometimes look like little pieces of metal that shred and kill, provide paths of death, ignorance, and hate.

Please, let’s walk the long road together.

Please, let’s write a different picture book. The one that ends with the man walking into the synagogue without a gun. The one that ends with the man feeling…hope.

 

© 2018 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Posted in Blog, Columns by Family Man, Ethics, Helping Kids Understand Loss, Morals, Perspective, Safety, Social Action, Talking About Disasters, Values | 1 Comment

Soldiering Toward Tolerance

By Gregory Keer

The soldier is someone’s child, a boy raised with lessons of love, the value of tolerance, and the benefits of friendship. Eight months into the soldier’s tour of duty, all those lessons are tested when two of his closest brothers in arms are out in a Humvee, driving through treacherous desert. Manning the turret is a hulking linebacker type who joined the military to protect his skinny high school buddy, who steers the vehicle. A bomb detonates, killing one soldier, knocking the skinny guy unconscious, and ripping off the arm of the linebacker. Bullets tear into the Hummer, awakening the skinny guy. Bleeding but determined to get his big friend to safety, the skinny guy guides the damaged Hummer back to base.

The soldier now stands before hundreds of students, not much younger than he was at the time of that fateful attack, telling his story.

“Aid was administered and both survived,” he says of his friends. It is then that the soldier pauses and tears come. “You see, real men cry.”

As he holds a hand to his face, he explains his deepest understanding of what they all fought for — to uphold a vision of the world that puts care for fellow human beings, regardless of race, creed, or color, above all else. Earlier in his presentation, he said that he had lost some of his Army friends and that “many of them were not the same race as me, or the same religion as me, or the same political ideology as me. But they died just the same. The strength of this country is and has always been in its diversity, and in its fearless inclusivity. If anything makes us exceptional it is this.”

The soldier has every reason to be cynical because of his trials, but his resolution is rooted so deeply that it binds a group of teenagers who struggle with their own doubts about life’s meaning. HIs resolution is so powerful that his tears return.

And it as this point that a student, a ninth-grade girl with a titanium leg in place of the one she was not born with, rises from her seat and steadily walks up to him. The soldier’s head is down, and he notices her just as she reaches out her arms and embraces him. He leans on this seemingly fragile girl with the strength to take him in and confirm that, yes, compassion and understanding balance out all that we lack.

When the soldier, who has let us all know that he is studying for a master’s degree with his opportunity to learn more about the world, finishes his speech, everyone rises, not just that brave girl. And everyone applauds him for his courage not only to risk his life for all, but his clarity in speaking up for something all too hard for many to see — that a world that is free and fair for everyone is worth fighting for.

As a teacher, I was privileged to hear the soldier’s message and the embracing girl’s pure show of support. I was also moved to become ever more resolved to drive home the message of freedom and equality so that my children will flourish and advocate others to be able to enjoy the same benefits.

This message has never been more crucial than in this new year, with a new presidential administration at the center of debate over how this country can move toward unity in the midst of intense disagreement and, at times, hate. Intolerance has reared its ugly head in many ways, more unfiltered than I have seen in my lifetime. It worries me, upsets me, and occasionally has me at a loss for how to move forward.

Yet, I feel compelled to find answers for my children and even for the students I teach. One answer is to get my family out of the house and travel the city, state, and country to see and meet people with backgrounds that differ from ours, in other environments. Another solution is to put as many books, TV programs, and films in front of them that show diverse perspectives. And it remains more vital than ever for me to encourage and fund as much formal education as my children can handle because knowledge really is the power we need more than ever.

These may seem obvious ideas, but they provide the experience and information children must have to understand others as well as themselves.

One more tack I resolve to focus on is to listen more intently to my children. They have viewpoints that will influence the future I hope to live in for at least a couple of decades. Judging by the audience that heard the soldier speak, many of today’s young people greatly value diversity and tolerance. They are better than most of us older folks at listening to opposing opinions, and unafraid of expressing their own. I have much to learn from them and must be willing to do so. After all, if I am doing anything right as a parent, they will be part of the generation to help this country come together more than I ever could.

© 2017 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Posted in Adolescence, Boys to Men, Columns by Family Man, Ethics, Morals, Perspective, Social Action, Teens, Tweens, Values | Leave a comment

Jacob Doing Work

IMG_3894Dear Jacob,

When you were born, your eyes opened wide like window shades snapping up to let daylight in. Your big brown peepers compelled everyone’s attention as if to say, “That was a long 40 weeks. Now, let’s get to work.”

You’ve been working ever since. A whirlwind of cerebral, emotional, and physical activity, you are the most productive human being I know. You do everything with a fire that propels you to seize every moment with the gusto of a swashbuckling pirate. “Yar, mateys, if we keep sailing west, we can get the day’s third chest of gold booty before sunset!”

For a father who sometimes barely musters the energy level of a base sloth, this has been a challenge. From babyhood to elementary school, you kept me awake nights wailing for attention when you lost your pacifier, itself likely exhausted from overwork. You made me chase after you as you scooped up curious items from the ground – cigarette butts, coins, tree droppings – before I could snatch them from your mouth. You had me read books to you way past my bedtime and rush out to the store for more art supplies to feed your bottomless drive to draw enough pictures to wallpaper our house.

And then there were the questions. “Why is it hot? What is the name of that tree? Why did you say that bad word?”

Often, I’d fret from exhaustion. “I don’t think I can answer another question about how old everyone he’s ever met is,” I’d say. “And how many times do I have to say no to another hermit crab, hamster, or beta fish?”

You even asked for another dog, not long after that crazy hound mistook your face for a steak. Nothing could deter your quest to grab more from life, despite the obstacles thrown at you.

Mom and I have spent many nights, catching our breath from the Jacob Keer Experience. However, our exhaustion has frequently turned to laughter and amazement at how much you accomplished each day. You may have drained our batteries by sundown, but our joy in raising such a vibrant boy has recharged us for sunup.

To bask a little more in your radiance, I coached you in basketball and soccer. Corralling you for drills wasn’t easy, yet it seemed to pay off. Eventually, your athletic smarts and strength outgrew me and you became the darting demon you are on the soccer pitch. I can’t tell you the pride I felt that day last year when – after years of developing your skills through practice in the backyard and at the park – you placed a penalty kick into the upper corner of the net to secure the championship for your team.

You and I have always shared a love for music. You do my heart good when you sing classic U2, Van Morrison, Prince, and Three Dog Night songs that you’ve somehow memorized in just a couple of listens. You make me beam with pride with performances on the ukulele and guitar. And you floor me with the kind of relentless attention to detail you give in writing lyrics to a song you’re mimicking or creating from scratch.

Sometimes, a lot of times, we fight about getting out of the house, doing chores, being polite to your brothers, or whatever else fathers and sons battle over. I feel awful when I lose my temper and wonder why you don’t acknowledge that I struggle, too, to find ways to communicate the right things in the right way. And then you’ll do something like make me a Father’s Day breakfast Wolfgang Puck would be jealous of or write a suspenseful story to put The Hunger Games to shame. These accomplishments teach me that you are listening, you are learning from me and Mom. You’re just listening and learning so fast, there’s no time to sit and just say, “Wow, look at what’s happening here.”

Well, I am doing just that, Jacob. I’m saying a huge “Wow” about all that’s been happening and continues to happen with everything you do. Everything you are.

You are impressive not just because of what you achieve, but how you achieve it. You work so very hard. Even when you throw your hands in the air in frustration, teetering on giving up on an essay or planning a social adventure with a dozen friends, you gather yourself and get back to the task at hand.

You worked hard, once again, to prepare for the momentous rite of passage that is your bar mitzvah. Everyone gets to experience the fruits of your labor. As for me, I may be the slowest moving guy in the family, but my love and pride keep pace with you, Jacob. May you always love the process and the work it takes to live a life you have filled to the top since the moment you were born.

Love,

Dad

Posted in Adolescence, Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Perspective, Teens | 1 Comment

Math Mayhem

SchoolhouseRockMathIn third grade, I was a multiplication whiz. I had memorized most of the times tables with the help of Schoolhouse Rock’s clever cartoons such as “Three is the Magic Number” and “Naughty Number Nine.” I was driven by the candy rewards my teacher promised with each recitation of the correct sums.

From multiplication, I went to the world of percentages, particularly as they applied to baseball statistics. I huddled over box scores each morning with my cereal and could recite batting averages at random with my buddies as we compared baseball cards.

It all went downhill from there. By the time I reached middle school, I was a tangled mess of a mathematician. Algebra proved to be my biggest downfall. You know, the very basis of all advanced arithmetic.

In my first year of high school, I would sit with Mrs. Goldberg, a kindly, infinitely patient educator, and go through algebraic equations again and again. Almost every time we completed a problem, she’d stop to say, “Now, does that make sense?”

I’d sit there, sometimes more worried about disappointing her than myself, and reply, “No.”

She’d exhale slowly and ask, “What don’t you understand?”

My response: “Everything.”

The poor woman once snapped a pencil in two before collecting herself to try another approach.

Despite the extra help from teachers, tutors, my father – for whom math came quite easily and my struggles were a confounding mystery– I became a math disaster. My confidence was so shaken that, even if an occasional ray of light shone through in practice, I’d manage to muck things up on a test. I couldn’t so much as look at an equation or say the word “math” without feeling queasy. When I was placed in a remedial math class in 10th grade, my humiliation was complete. I felt like numerical dunce.

Try as I might to keep from transferring my issues to my children, some of this pain has reared its ugly head in my kids. Thankfully, my middle son has emerged from earlier struggles through a work ethic that makes mine pale in comparison. However, my eldest and youngest boys have been through the arithmetic ringer.

This past year, Benjamin (16) labored through a second semester of Algebra 2, nailing all of his homework assignments, yet suffering on his exams. Each time, he would go into the test feeling he knew the material, then, in the heat of the assessment, he would get stuck on a problem or two, puzzle them through backward and forwards, and invariably run out of time. His confidence dropped further with each test so much that he doubted his ability to do well even before he started. His math teacher gave him extra instruction, the department chair helped him during office hours, and we found a great peer tutor to aid with the final exam prep.

In the end, Benjamin passed the class, but not without feeling that math was a dark labyrinth that offered little daylight. This troubled me because I hated seeing my son slip down a slope of declining faith in his abilities and, worse, because I could offer no help other than commiseration.

For my nine-year-old, it’s hard to tell whether his math problems stemmed from the dislike of the challenge or from the challenge being too great for his developing brain. Just getting Ari to sit down to do calculations was like pulling on the leash of a dog that doesn’t want to go outside. When I did get Ari to approach a set of problems, he’d frequently get so tied up in knots that we splashed around countless puddles of tears (both his and mine).

From attempting to boost Benjamin’s confidence before tests to hand-holding Ari while he scribbled out answers, nothing helped pave my kids’ way to mathematical success.

I realize, after a summer of reflection, that my sons’ struggles are not necessarily mine. My genetics might have something to do with their math block, but it doesn’t mean I can be the one to fix it. In fact, the more I tried to fix it, the more I interfered in their individual process of getting out of the mess. All I saw was their pain and my need to alleviate it. As a result, we all finished the year feeling unsettled about the situation.

As the new school year begins, I intend to follow a different approach. My children’s battle with math is not a chance for me to rectify all that went wrong in my own number conundrums. Instead, I will be supportive from afar and let the fresh year, with different teachers, lead the way to hopefully a better experience for my kids. If they do struggle, so be it. I know of at least one person who made it to his 40s only being good at memorizing baseball stats.

© 2014 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Education, Perspective | Leave a comment

Words for My Father

By Gregory Keer

DadwBenjToday would have been my father’s 75th birthday. We had been planning to celebrate it for months and months prior to this date, July 12, 2014. Cancer had other plans, and it took him away from us on February 9 of this year, following a diagnosis less than four months earlier.

After my dad’s death, I took a hiatus from this Web site, partly in keeping with the advice he often gave me to try to slow down a bit more to gather in the details of life. But, on this day when it’s so very hard to be without him, I want to recognize the meaning he had for me in some fashion that feels right. Below is a version of the eulogy I gave at Dad’s funeral. It was surreal to be speaking about him in past tense when I said the words in front of the hundreds who came out to honor him that day. It still doesn’t feel quite real — and yet it is. Grieving is a long process, but remembering is forever, especially when it involves a man such as my father.

***

There are many reasons why I write. A number of them are because of my father. Dad, the man of science, was also a man of poetry. He wrote of moments and emotions in loving phrases to his luminous wife Franny and he etched in ink words of praise and vivid observation to all his children. He even wrote a children’s story about “Rollo,” a ball who learned to keep moving if he wanted to enjoy the world around him.

At times, I struggled to talk to my dad. There was the divorce, which took him away from daily opportunities to converse and he was needed by tens of thousands of patients over a 45-year career. Sometimes, I felt I couldn’t get enough of him. I certainly couldn’t get enough of him on the phone. My sister Kim can attest to my father’s dislike of the phone — often exhausted by work calls, Dad treated the receiver like it was one of Maxwell Smart’s shoe communicators that had come in contact with a pile of dog poop.

One of my motivations to write was to find ways to stop time, particularly in the hyperspace of adolescence, and tell my dad how much I loved him, how much I needed his words of validation. In my pre-teen and teen years, I wrote cards to him, with painstakingly chosen messages. It helped, especially since he wrote back cards to me, with sentences that never failed to reduce me to tears because they shone with such love and attention to the details of my concerns.

It was partly through my father’s writings that I was assured he was always thinking of me, crafting ways to guide me, even when he wasn’t talking out loud. They also showed me how much my dad preferred action over words. Dad was a doer, and the relationship we had over 47 years was less about chit chat or parental lecturing and more about playing basketball together, going to baseball games, and taking trips. So many trips to places like Chicago to see the grandparents, Philadelphia for father-son time, the Sierras for moments of hilarity with the Sussmans, Yosemite for one of many KJ adventures, Palm Desert with all the grandchildren, and Paris for a grown-up vacation with Franny – who, together with Dad, taught me so very much about love and partnership that I was able to find the most remarkable woman in Wendy. My God, there were so many vacations that he made happen so he could enjoy his loved ones without distractions.

Certainly, there were distractions, as there are in any life led in service to a community, that wedged between my dad and my efforts to get more words and attention from him. Often, when we were out at a supermarket together or a ballgame, he’d get approached by a patient who wanted to say hello to their favorite doctor. He was a bit of a celebrity, my dad, and I was known for 30-plus years as Dr. Keer’s son. It was a great coup for me one day when Dad called me up to tell me a student of mine came into the office and asked him, “Aren’t you Mr. Keer’s father?” Finally, I had turned the tables on him. And no one was prouder of it than Dad.

I wanted this speech to be funnier – Dad had such a great appreciation for humor  — as he showed me through the tapes of Johnny Carson clips with legendary comedians, the afternoons of watching Mel Brooks movies, and his own goofiness and willingness to be poked fun at for his follicle-y challenged head, his bird-like legs, and his woefully underprivileged sense of rhythm.

But, I’m not feeling easily humored right now. I’m just beginning to miss him. I’m floating in the fog of all the subtle ways he enhanced my life through little gestures and a consistency of presence that I often took for granted. For a father of such carefully selected words and a son who never seems to shut up, we had one particular trip that was emblematic of our entire journey together. It was a weekend stay in San Francisco two years ago to see the Dodgers play the Giants, to eat great food since we both like that kind of thing, and to just — be — together. Not talking so much, just being.

He was really good at just being.

So, Dad, thank you for being with me. Thank you for being with all of us.

Posted in Aging, Columns by Family Man, Death, Grandparents, Helping Kids Understand Loss, Marriage, Perspective, Values | 1 Comment

Great Expectations

By Gregory Keer

great_expectationsI always think I’m going to enjoy the holidays more than I do. I imagine the days off as time that will allow me to reduce my stress, live in the moment, and enjoy family and friends. Oh, those carefree hours to play basketball in the yard with the kids, go to a few movies together, laugh, eat and share stories around the holiday table.

Yeah. Right.

Instead, stress seems to escalate — mostly because of all these hopes. My kids don’t like playing basketball (not with me, and certainly not together). My adolescent boys see all the good movies with their friends. And meals are spent with Wendy and me running around serving people, asking the kids not to talk over each other, and usually ending with someone crying or yelling or pouting.

Often, that someone is me.

Whereas most people like to reference A Christmas Carol around the holidays, I relate more, at least in terms of the title, to Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I set my bar impossibly high, imagining all my thirst for the joys of family life will be quenched in a mere two-week period.

This year, I aim to change all that. I’m planning to clear up all my holiday problems in one fell swoop. A lot to expect? Perhaps. So, let me rephrase — I’m going to make the winter festival season a little better by lowering my expectations.

First, I need more me-time. One of my mistakes as a parent, especially during the holidays, is believing that I have to be engaged with the children at every possible moment. When they were little, I needed to be guiding them and playing with them. Now, they don’t want to spend that much time with me, not because they don’t love me, but because they are individuating and hanging out with people who are helping define them beyond my reach. And, to a large degree, that’s the way it should be.

So, instead of licking my wounds about being irrelevant, I need to take more private hours to read one of those neglected novels, sleep in or take naps, and go to the good movies with my wife or even by my lonesome if no one will go to the cineplex with me. These are gifts I will give to myself, but they will also teach my sons that we are all better people to our loved ones when we are first good to ourselves.

Second, I need to play sports differently. So what if my kids don’t like basketball and won’t play sports together as I always envisioned they would? I’ll hit the field or court with them separately for whatever sport they wish — even if it’s just for 10 minutes each, one time each over the entire course of the two weeks. When they say they’re done playing, I’ll stop and consider the session a success. Usually, I run into problems because I nag them to play a little longer so I can teach them a few things. I have this grand idea they will learn a couple of tips from the old man. Not during these holidays, not this time. The point will just be to have fun.

Third, I will not try to turn meals into some version of The Waltons’ holiday dinners with everyone politely sitting ‘round the table, delighting in their togetherness. My children don’t even know who The Waltons were, which may be part of the problem. In fact, I kind of hate The Waltons now because they corrupted my sense of what holiday meals are supposed to be. Instead, I will allow our dinners to be as chaotic as my kids want since that’s my family’s way. In my house, the kids eat turkey stuffing with their fingers, my younger ones jump up from the table at random to sing Bruno Mars tunes, and my eldest goes on philosophical political rants with his unsuspecting grandparents. I will just sit back and enjoy the always-delicious food, restraining myself from trying to control the situation, and realizing that I’m lucky enough to have family to share the mayhem.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure this will work out, but I have to try. After 15 years of expecting my holidays to be as perfect as the ending to It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s time to prepare a bit more for the unexpected and just bask in it.

It may be that, upon stepping back from my role as a wannabe winter-season patriarch, my kids will take up the reigns and drive the sleigh of fun and togetherness activities. Perhaps they’ll look at me and say, “Dad, we love how hard you work at family holidays so we’re going to reward you with family basketball and a dinner of toasts to the greatness of you and mom.”

But that’s a hope, not an expectation.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Holidays, Perspective, Work-Family Balance | 1 Comment

The Ongoing Concern of Over-Parenting

Overparenting-imagesHuffington Post Parents posted this article: Is there such a thing as “too much parenting”?

What do you think? Give me an example of when you pulled back on the over-parenting. How did it work out for you?

I’ll start. My middle son almost never has shoes and socks on before getting in the car in the morning. Yesterday, after a number of run-ins with him about getting out of the house, I told him tomorrow was a new day. This morning, he pushed a bunch of my buttons (eating slowly, forgetting his water bottle, etc.), but he had this shoes on before leaving the house.

Trust me, this is one minor example of something that worked, but it’s a struggle for me to find the balance between being conscientious and helicopter. I want to take pride in guiding my kids, yet I want them to do stuff on their own and feel proud of it. There are lots of articles (including a good one from Time in 2009) and books on this topic, so let’s get our own conversation going.

For more about my own struggle with over-parenting vs. conscientious parenting, see Subtext.

Posted in Blog, Child Development, Over-parenting, Parenting Stress, Perspective | Leave a comment

Michael Gurian’s New Book Embraces Adult Development

Author/marriage and family therapist/researcher Michael Gurian has written a number of books with the word “wonder” in the title. This is partly because he has an endless curiosity about the complexities of human beings and living in the modern world. In particular, he, along with his colleagues at the Gurian Institute, has reached into the intricacies of science as it relates to gender and produced such bestselling books as The Wonder of Boys, The Wonder of Girls, Boys and Girls Learn Differently, and Leadership and the Sexes. These guides have helped countless parents and educators understand children and help them navigate growing up.

With his newest book, The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life After FiftyMichael Gurian trains his considerable research and analytical skills on people who have already grown up, yet continue to develop in ways often over-looked by society. Especially because we are fortunate enough to be able to live longer, Gurian’s book takes on greater significance as he addresses such topics as community building, stress reduction, illness, sexual intimacy, and death. What makes the author so effective, here, is his constructive, positive approach and down-to-earth tone on the topic of aging. This is the kind of book worth reading for anyone, even before hitting 50, who wants to better comprehend his/her own changing life in order to live it with less fear and more fullness.

Posted in Adulthood, Aging, Blog, Books, Gender, Health, Perspective | Leave a comment

Big Babies

By Gregory Keer

This April, there are two things I’m not looking forward to – tax day and the day after that, my birthday. As I lurch toward another number closer to 50, I notice how much of my parenting life is behind me.

When did Ari (8) grow out of the pants we bought him three months ago? What is making Jacob (11) turn red every time that girl walks by? How is Benjamin (15, this month) old enough to practice driving a car?

Part of what makes this so hard is that, as I look in the rear-view mirror, I think I operated much better as a dad of babies than I do as a father of fast-developing dudes. I have to dig for details about their days that they don’t want to share with me. When they veer off the behavior track, I’m challenged to give them directions they often choose not to follow, necessitating consequences more complex than time outs. Then there’s the expense of raising growing boys, pushing me to work longer hours to pay for the field trips, sports gear, and expanding grocery list. With all this, life feels less like a feature-length movie and more like a YouTube short.

I was so present when the kids were in diapers, strollers, and cribs. I mean, nothing slows time down like the fact that babies simply cannot move fast or, as a good high chair or car seat can attest, move at all.

My wife and I spent countless hours merely staring at our sons when they were infants. We studied them like a just-assembled wonder toy. Look at those eyes that open and shut all by themselves! See how he examines his own pudgy hand? Behold his first poopie in the potty!

There was little we didn’t celebrate about our babies, from how one of them smeared yogurt all over his head to see how it felt to the way they crawled (one rocked to launch, one skooched like a locomotive, and one combat crawled).

And then there was the baby giggling. Benjamin had a deep belly laugh that would go on as long as we laughed with him. Jacob couldn’t get enough of the raspberries we blew on his tummy. And Ari screamed with glee when we plied his neck with kisses.

Since then, these toys have grown into bigger, louder machines bent on rolling boldly into the world. They won’t let us just stare at them.

My eldest, Benjamin, has become an expert in the last-minute phone-text plan and jets off to hang out with friends. He also runs cross-country, making him home late a lot. We seldom see the boy who once cried at the day-care window for us to take him with us to work.

So when I walk into his room to sit and gaze at him, he says things like, “Dad, it’s a little creepy to have you look at me for the past, like, three hours.”

Just recently, the rest of the family and I were driving home when we saw Benjamin riding his bike to meet us.

“Look, look, look,” I said. “He’s so cool on his ten-speed.”

“He’s not a baby,” Jacob groaned from the back seat.

“Yes, he is,” my wife replied. “You’re still our babies.”

“Do you guys talk about me that way behind my back?” he asked with alarm.

“Yep,” Wendy and I said in unison.

“Why do I have such weird parents?” he muttered.

Of course, these are the comments I made to my own parents as I grew from being their infant idol to self-conscious tween. That doesn’t make it any easier as I travel through the rapid movement of my parenting timeline.

While I miss those baby years – and all the satisfaction that came from doing such basic heroic acts as feeding, clothing, and comforting my children – there lies so much goodness ahead. My children will take on sports and SATs, form friendships and romances, apply to colleges and jobs, and, eventually (I hope), become parents themselves. They’ll succeed a lot and screw up a lot, but I’ll get to observe and guide, though probably not as much as I’d like. What matters is, as I age, those babies will always be the objects of my affection and sources of amazement.

As a seasoned father who can no longer outrun or outsmart his children, I have some advice for the newbie dads. Keep staring at the wonders that coo and spit up and even tantrum before you. They grow quickly, but the experience lingers forever.

Posted in Babies, Columns by Family Man, Perspective | Leave a comment