Tag: parenting

New trend in grad gifts has parents going for bust

image After reading about how the parents of LuLu Diaz gave their daughter $6,000 breast implants for her high school graduation gift, I couldn’t help but be shocked by the idea of a father agreeing to anything that would make his teenaged daughter more enticing to teenaged boys. As luck would have it, I actually spent several years in my teens. Because of this I can tell you there are many teenaged boys who still haven’t made it past the “breast” portion of this column. Sadly, some may never finish reading it because, in order to break them out of their current hypnotic spell, it will become necessary for a close friend or family member to light them on fire.

Let’s face it: This is the nature of most men until the aging process inspires a level of physical maturity that dethrones sex as the main motivator. While there is no set timeline for this transformation, most experts agree it begins anywhere between six and eight months after death.

Until then, at least from a father’s perspective, men can’t be trusted. Continue reading New trend in grad gifts has parents going for bust

Parents: Lung capacity is key when choosing an inflatable toy

(Because I am still off the grid and out of air from inflating water toys over the weekend, I am offering this re-post from the archives as a warning to parents as they kick off the summer inflatable-toy-buying season. In the meantime, Skippy the Rabid Blindfolded Squirrel and I hope to see all of you tomorrow for the next edition of The Box! Assuming, of course, that Skippy gets his blindfold off…)

Inflated whale We live less than 15 minutes from our favorite lake. The problem is, it also happens to be everyone else’s favorite lake, which means in order to get a spot within the vicinity of actual water, you have to be there when the gates open at noon and participate in something similar to the Oklahoma Land Rush. It’s not uncommon to see small children strapped to inflatable toys and tossed ahead of the crowd in order to claim prime territory.

As a parent, it’s not a gamble I’m willing to take with my child. Especially since, as a general rule, it only counts if your child is in an upright position once they skid to a stop.

The good news is that once the initial pandemonium is over, things generally settle into a state of peaceful co-existence as, one by one, parents begin passing out while blowing up inflatable toys. Sadly, the evolutionary process has not been able to keep up with the growing demand for larger and larger inflatable animals. Unless you are a pearl diver by trade, chances are your lung capacity is nowhere near what it needs to be in order to fully inflate your child’s favorite water toy. Continue reading Parents: Lung capacity is key when choosing an inflatable toy

Create lasting memories with traumatic family portraits

image Welcome to Post Traumatic Sundays, which are posts written during my first marriage. None have appeared on this blog before, and only a couple were included in my book. What these posts aren’t about is venting or vindictiveness.

So what’s the point, you ask? Simply to offer reflections from someone dealing with an unhappy marriage in the best way he knew how:

With humor.

Eight years later, I am happily re-married to someone who inspires me each and every day to laugh for the right reasons. It’s good to laugh with you for the right reasons as well…

* * * * * * * *

Every year around this time, we have our family photo taken. This used to mean packing up the kids and going to a portrait studio, where we could always count on a trained professional to eventually hurl a stuffed animal at us and demand we leave — but not before making us look through our entire package of portrait options. We, of course, never actually purchased any of those packages because they all had the same sequence of photos:

My daughter sticking her tongue out.
My son picking his nose.
Me putting both kids in a Vulcan death grip.
My wife yelling into my ear.

All of this captured in front of a snowy backdrop and available in 8×10, 5×7 and wallet-sized prints. Continue reading Create lasting memories with traumatic family portraits

That time my daughter found Nemo — then ate him

image To say you could catch a fish from the kiddie pool at our local Outdoor Festival several years ago is like saying you could turn a few heads if you backed your SUV into a Harley during the Sturgis Rally.

My oldest daughter had just turned seven, and the pool was literally brimming with farm-raised trout that would’ve just as quickly latched onto a Milkdud as Powerbait. Given a window of 15 minutes of fishing for every dollar, most kids old enough to hold their own poles were standing gawk-eyed with a fish in their sack after less than five minutes. So, when my daughter landed her seven-incher, I asked if she wanted to keep it or throw it back in — hoping against hope that she would opt for the throw-back.

I think my exact words were something along the lines of, “Sweetie, do you want to keep the baby trout until he runs out of air, or put him back in the water with his family?”

“I want to keep him,” she said firmly, then turned to her mother and asked for another dollar. Continue reading That time my daughter found Nemo — then ate him

Don’t do as I drink (and other lessons my father unintentionally taught me)

Yep, that's me, learning about the dangers of smoking .
Yep, that’s me, learning about the dangers of smoking .

I come from a long line of alcoholics. Truth be told, the roots of my family tree are probably located in a beer garden.

For this reason, I was determined to break the cycle and be the first member of my family to remember most of his 20s and 30s, not develop a beer gut and actually know who all of my kids are.

I was genuinely frightened of carrying a gene I assumed had its own alcohol content — which is why I didn’t crack open my first beer until I was 20; in a moment of weakness; working under the blistering Texas sun; because there was no water or soda; and I had just read about spontaneous human combustion. Continue reading Don’t do as I drink (and other lessons my father unintentionally taught me)

Dirty diaper football: another good reason to use disposables

image Though I’m a parent who is many years beyond his children’s diaper phase (Ya Baby! WOOO-HOOO, You Know it! YOWZA!)

…Sorry

Anyway, I have several friends who are now embarking on this journey and who have asked my advice regarding the choice between cloth or disposable diapers. I told them, without hesitation, that I was somewhat offended by their insinuation, and that unless it was All-You-Can-Eat-Frijole-Night at the Enfermo Taco, I was still quite in control of my bodily functions, thank you very much.

Moments later, upon returning from the restroom, it hit me: I really needed to go back. It was during this second run — or really more of a quick step — I realized they had been referring to diapers for their own children. Continue reading Dirty diaper football: another good reason to use disposables

Rule number one to coaching kids: Never, ever forget the jelly donuts

(I’m sure a lot of you have been wondering, “Where is today’s Flashback Sunday? It’s always posted at 6:30 a.m.!” Ok, fine; only one of you was. Regardless, like many Americans do this time of year, I completely forgot about the time change and, as a result, didn’t remember to set my clock back by … uh… 12 hours. I know we’re actually suppose to gain an hour, but seeing as how every clock in our house has a different time, I’m sure you can understand how this could have happened. My apologies to everyone. To avoid making this mistake again in the spring, I will be posting my March 9 Flashback Sunday in an hour…)

Going downtown for a hail Mary pass into the bucket.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not very athletic. I made this realization in the third grade, when I was knocked unconscious 32 times playing dodge ball. After that first game, I remember waking up in the nurse’s office and being told of a special program for “gifted” athletes who were so special they got to wear a football helmet during recess.

Of course, I eventually figured out there was no “special program,” and openly expressed my feelings of betrayal when I slammed my helmet on the desk of my high school counselor.

After which I was taken to the hospital with a broken finger.

I live with the memory of being an unathletic child on a daily basis. Particularly when I look in the mirror and see a man whose head still fits into a third-grade football helmet. For this reason, when my daughter asked me to coach her fourth-grade basketball team, I smiled, took her hand, and began faking a seizure. I panicked at the thought of providing guidance to a team of fourth-grade girls, any one of whom could “take me to the hole.” Continue reading Rule number one to coaching kids: Never, ever forget the jelly donuts

Today’s Halloween costume is tomorrow’s therapy session

(Welcome to this week’s Flashback-Flashback-Flashback Sunday! No, that wasn’t an echo, or the remnants of a hangover. You read it right; this week’s post is an extremely rare flashback within a flashback within a flashback. OK, just to clarify, that wasn’t an echo either. It’s just that this week’s post covers three generations of Halloween costume traumas. In short: a Halloween flashback Tri Fecta..! Tri Fecta…! Tri Fecta..!
Ok, that time really WAS an echo…)

They may not look traumatized now, but I’m saving up for my children’s therapy sessions anyway — just in case.
It was a conversation that I had been putting off for as long as possible, even though I knew it was my responsibility as a parent to sit down and have “The Talk” with my daughter.

It’s better that it come from me rather than her getting crazy ideas from someone at school, I told myself.

So I sat my daughter down, held my breath for a moment, then and asked:

“What do you want to be for Halloween?”

For some of you, this is an exciting time that allows you to bond with your child by making their Halloween-costume dream come true.

For the rest of us, it’s a time when we cross our fingers and pray that our child’s “Halloween costume dream” is hanging on a rack somewhere at Wal-Mart. Because if it isn’t, we’ll have to make something, and therefore put our child’s emotional health at risk by creating a costume that could potentially scar them for life. Continue reading Today’s Halloween costume is tomorrow’s therapy session

No pumpkin-carving experience is complete without a near-fatal knife wound

image Carving a jack-o-lantern used to require little more than a pumpkin, an oversized kitchen knife, and a tourniquet. It was a simple matter of plunging a 10-inch French knife into the gourd of your choice and creating a triangle-eyed, square-toothed masterpiece of horror. In those days, the trickiest thing about making your jack-o-lantern was deciding on how to light the candle.

Option one: Light candle, then attempt to lower it into the pumpkin without catching your sleeve on fire.

Option two: Put the candle inside the pumpkin first, then attempt to light it without catching your sleeve on fire.

Option three: Accept the inevitable and just light your sleeve on fire, then go find a candle.

After a quick trip to the emergency room for stitches and some light skin grafting, you could return home and set your jack-o-lantern on the porch, where it would remain until gravity and molecular breakdown eventually caused it to collapse in on itself like the birth of a new star — appropriately enough, usually around Christmas time. Continue reading No pumpkin-carving experience is complete without a near-fatal knife wound

Don’t push the (belly) button

(It’s Flashback Sunday! That time when we roll up our sleeves and dig into the distant past for something that hasn’t been seen in many years. Sort of like literary proctologists, except without the physical discomfort or awkwardness. That said, today’s Flashback is from 2005, back before I even had a blog because I still referred to going online as “Using the Internets.” The inspiration for this column came from my then seven-year-old son, who became fascinated with putting things in his belly button. I’m just glad that particular curiosity ended there…)

image As with most explanations I find myself giving as a parent, things started with a simple “No.”

In this case, it was: “No, you can’t save chewing gum in your belly button.” My son then countered with the inevitable “Why?”

“Because it’s gross,” I explained, then added for good measure: “What if it gets stuck?”

“It won’t, Dad.”

“It might — so take it out.”

A roll of the eyes, droop of the shoulders. “But why-y-y-y-y?”

“Because I said so.”

Eventually, it always comes down to that answer, which isn’t an answer at all. But for some reason it seems to do the trick. At least it used to. Apparently on this day, my son had awakened a little wiser, and with a better understanding of the difference between battles and wars.

Oh joy. Continue reading Don’t push the (belly) button