That’s What They Do

Four years ago, I sat down with Jacob, a mate of mine who’s a psychologist. I began complaining about how crazy-making my youngest son’s behaviour was becoming in the evenings.

(Now, 4 years later, I can’t remember what the heck he was doing that was getting me so worked up).

He patiently listened to me describing the situation and anguishing over my inability to stop my son from doing whatever it was he was doing. When there came a lull in my whining, my friend leant forward and simply said,

“Pete. That’s what 6 year olds do.”

It was all I needed. It was epiphany. It told me that I was stressing about something that was normal. That I needed to put my energy into directing my son’s energy rather than trying to shut it off. It was a vital reality check, a calming thought.

That’s what 6 year olds do.

This kind of self-talk helps me overcome Gen X anxiety around having perfect kids.

AND Gen X guilt over not being able to make the kids perfect. (It’s stupid when you verbalize it, but it’s what many of us suffer with).

What do you tell yourself to calm yourself down, to give your kids some grace, to be more positive and proactive around them?

Weekly Stats 9th July

Attended 2nd interview for new job I’m hoping for.

Completed 2nd draft of new short story and posted it on my online writers’ workshop for comment and feedback.

Reached halfway point of  1st draft of novel.

Took Youngest Son and Friend to Karate Kid and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ate way too much crappy food and way too little fruit and vegies.

Managed behaviour of a 14- and 10-year old during school holidays with mixed results.

In case anyone cares…

Well Done, Boys!

Well done, Socceroos! You showed your mettle and your strength. You leave the World Cup with heads held high.

This is despite yet more poor refereeing. It seemed to me that each and every time a Serbian player fell down they got a free kick. Once, the player even tripped over himself and got a free for it! I seriously think that if the Serbian team had been out there playing alone, they still would have been getting free kicks!

Anyway. Great goals and great heart. (And I finally saw a match starting at 4.30 am that was worth getting up for!)

Comings and Goings

Been a busy year. Bet you know the feeling?

Amongst the busyness I’ve been:

• Trying my hand at short story writing, with 3 ‘rejections’ from magazines to my credit and one ‘maybe, we’ll have our editor take a look at it’
• Negotiating, negotiating, negotiating – with community groups and business to find the right service(s) for working dads to support them in their parenting / work-life balance. (We’re getting there – one company has signed me up to run 2 lunchtime seminars for Dads in the organisation).
• Playing taxi driver to two boys who play soccer, tennis and train in bass guitar and tap dancing. (Ok, the lady wife does the tap dancing taxi driving).
• Training out of school youth to get them jobs … and a vision for life.
• Jotting the odd article for other ‘zines: see Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man over at Family Capers.
• completing a Voice Over course … you never know, they may be MY dulcet tones you’re hearing on that documentary or commercial.

In amongst all this, the occasional event has taken me by suprise and reinforced my commitment to just being a solid father: knifing in a school, a primary (elemntary) school girl holding a knife to another’s throat, kids wrapping cars full of their friends around trees and telephone poles… and even the young people who turn up to my Wednesday/Thursday classes, who are good human beings who’ve been dealt a bad hand…

I’m doing my best to tune out from the busyness often. To tune in to my wife and kids. To watch youngest son while he’s showing me his latest tap dancing manoevre. To remember to ask oldest son on Thursday morning about something he told me would happen at school on Wednesday. To say “Sure I’ll come on the Melbourne City Romp with you” to oldest son and sacrifice a day to be with him.

I don’t think I’m getting an A for Attentive Parenting this semester, but hopefully the mark will be better than a D. Then again, who am I to even judge myself … as if parenting were a set of competencies you have to tick off to succeed at. We’re all making it up as we go along; parenting’s a moving target and with all the distractions of modern life, it’s a blue-eyed miracle (to quote Stephen King) that we ever hit anything.

So. How you doin’?

Vacation, Vacation, Vacation

Sigh. Well, I’m freshly back from 5-day road trip with my two boys. (My long-suffering wife kept working, enduring lonely nights at home with nothing to keep her happy but having the TV, the bed, the popcorn all to herself. Poor thing.)

Most important lesson I learned from this trip was not to pack too much in.

Second most important, boys eating lots of junk food and being cooped up together in a car and motel rooms = lots of farts – live with it.

Third most important was, if you’ve travelling to another city, get a real map. a handful of google map print-offs won’t do. Canberra is the most bizarrely laid out city on earth. You literally drive in circles, under one cross streett and over the next until you are heading in the opposite direction you think you are. In fact, oldest son came up with the best advice: “Dad, just drive opposite to what you think.” It worked…

Anyhoo. It was definitely worthwhile, and I’m so glad I took the time out to do it, and grateful to the wife for helping me plan accomodation etc. Left to me, we’d be doing the Mary and Joseph thing, roaming around a town after dark looking for an inn…

Without boring you with anecdotes and too many slides, here’s some photos…

Youngest Son (pretty much the only Aldin willing to be photographed). Here you see said youngster posing by a vehicle of destruction at our War Museum in Canberra, probably dreaming about hotwiring it…

 

This is one of the amazing sets of models at the Museum depicting famous scenes from the Great War. Absolutely breathtaking.

 

Constable Pete putting his son in the tree-trunk jail for farting  in the car. 

They’re Back!

Yes the Aldins have returned from the warmth of Queensland’s Gold Coast to the chill of Melbourne. Many thanks to our housesitter Teaghs who not only looked after the dog-monkey, but MADE OUR BED WITH FRESH SHEETS for our arrival home. So nice to have a maid…

Here’s a few happy snaps and some thoughts to follow. Will also bore you with shots from wifey’s cell phone once I get it hooked up to the PC…

 

 

 

Youngest Son riding the waves…

 

 

 

Youngest Son with the one that got away…

 

 

 

 

 

The view from out of our apartment living room window.

 

 

 

 

Ten  Point Summary of holiday:

1. 13 year old males need to either take a friend up with them or be taken out and entertained every second of every day or else their testosterone levels take the fun out of the holiday for everyone else. (Lesson learned for next time)
2. 13 year old males can also be trusted to take their brother for the afternoon around the theme park so Mum and Dad can play on the slides. (That was a GOOD day).
3. Movieworld sucks mainly because they won’t let you take food into the park and you have to pay ridiculous prices for their food.
4. Dreamworld suprised me by having the most (and best) to do of any of the 5 main theme parks up there.
5. My bad back survived the Superman ride, the Tower of Terror (twice), the Motorcoaster and LOTS of waterslides.
6. Ten year old boys are fun to take on holidays because everything’s exciting and fun.
7. On the Gold Coast you get burnt in the morning and tanned in the afternoon. Wierd.
8. Very little customer service exists on the Gold Coast. Don’t expect it and you won’t get annoyed.
9. Fold up magnetic games are a lifesaver on plane trips with kids.
10. Highlight last time was firing 50 rounds with a Glock. This time it was simply sitting on the patio reading a novel and staring at the surf. Must be getting old…

The Fine Art of Meddling

Want to build a cubby house with your kids?  Here’s how not to do it.

Many moons ago, I found myself building a “cubby-house” (or more likely a lean-to) for my oldest son. Only problem was, it shouldn’t have been me building it. Let me explain…

I’d been reading about how pre-teen boys need to engage with the outdoors and some have the instinct to build shelters to prove to themselves they could fend for themselves. It all sounded rather plausible and when my son came to me asking if he could build a “cubby” in the backyard, because his friend Nathan had just done that in his, I was all for it. We went to see a friend of mine, a carpenter, who kindly made some suggestions about what materials and even gave my son (and me!) a crash course in building and construction. We assembled the materials and went home to build it.

I know what you’re thinking: “What a great Dad! Giving his son space and encouragement to do it. And look at his rippling muscles in that picture as he even gets involved with the project. I wish I had a Dad like that.”

… actually, you shouldn’t wish that.

From the start, this project was undermined by two of my tendencies that I battle constantly:

• the need to be seen as a great Dad – particularly by my kids – and
• the need to teach things … actually, let’s call that last one what it really is: the need to micromanage (to direct or control in a detailed, often meddlesome manner).

Things first came unstuck when I told him, no you can’t build it where you want to, you have to build it where I want you to. At first pass, this might sound like a good thing, and – look – if he had wanted to build it on the roof of our house or nail it to my wife’s car, then fair enough, I should say no. But he simply wanted to attach it to the back fence. I didn’t like that and said, no build it over here.

The next problem came when I stayed outside to assist him instead of going into the house and leaving him to it. Now, my excuse was he asked me to stay, specifically to hold the beams while he hammered. Again, good dadship to be there for him? But alack! and alas! I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.

When he said “Dad I can’t do this!!”, struggling to get the nail into the wood, I could have said, “Yes you can; keep at it champ.” Sometimes I do encourage him this way. But not this time. I could have said, “This wood is pretty hard, it’s probably not suited to this. Do you want to finish what we can with the other pieces then go out and find another piece that’s easier to work with?” That would have allowed him to stay in control and saved face for him. I could have said that but I didn’t.

I said, “Let me have a try.”

Those 5 little words resulted ultimately in the photo you see above. Where is my son in that photo? Nowhere. (My other son is taking it). Oldest Son has by this time gone inside frustrated. After twenty minutes of rising tension about how to do things, he’d thrown a mild tantrum and given up. Because whereas I thought I was communicating “I’m here for you”, what he heard was “You can’t do it, give a real man the hammer.”

As usual from little things, big things grow. From my small action – well TWO small actions – discouragement flourished.

The results: four planks of wood loosely nailed together in my backyard and sitting there for months like that, a boy who lost interest in building things and a Dad still kicking himself.

You might say all sorts of things like, “The boy should have had thicker skin” and such. I seriously don’t think this one was about him being oversensitive. I think I truly screwed up.

The lessons for me were twofold:

1. be careful not to communicate to a boy that he can’t do ‘it’  [there are so many subtle and not-so subtle ways we can do this]
2. be careful not to discourage a kid from a passion of theirs in any way

In this case, there was a fine line between directing and discouraging, between placing boundaries around his activity and meddling with it. Knowing my son, what he needed and desired from me was my company, my pride in him, my encouragement.

Sometimes kids need to be allowed to make a mess of our backyards, to risk putting a crack in our fence palings, and even to try-and-fail without being shown “how to do it properly” (especially by someone like me who really didn’t know how to do it anyway.)

An 8 year old’s Movie Review

From my son’s school journal, dated 18th February 2008 (he was then 8 years old), copied exactly as written…

Last night I went to the movis to see Jumper the movie. It had lot’s of swear words in it so I no it’s M15+. It’s about a boy who get’s his girlfriend somthing and a boy takes it and throws it on ice and the boy gets it then falls in the ice and he ends up in a library. He finds another Jumper and they are rich so they have everything they want. And people try to kill the Jumpers.

Apologies for the plot spoiler…

We got a Bleeder!

Get a call. At work. Not a call you want to get anywhere or anytime…

“Your (8-year old) Son got hit in the head by a rock thrown by another student, Mr Aldin.” Blood everywhere. School Nurse had “never seen so much blood.”

The Good Lady Wife leaves her work, picks him up, takes him to the Doctor. Everything’s fine. The cut is less than a centimetre long (about 1/4 inch) and not very deep. Must have just hit a blood vessel. He’s ok, but it hurt a lot.

Finally gets back to his normal chirpy self, lies on a camp mattress in front of the TV

… only to have his bigger brother (who is in those awkward first stages of puberty where suddenly the body is bigger than the brain thinks it is and who has no idea where his limbs exist in the space-time continuum) try to step across the patient

… and kick him hard in the head

… right where the rock hit…

More tears.

Fortunately no more blood.

Ah, the joys.

Canine Proofreading

When Youngest Son was even younger (around 4 y.o.), we were walking the dog one day and he asked, “Why do dogs do wee (urinate) everywhere they go?” I explained that they were leaving messages for other dogs to say they’d been here.

Another time he asked “Why do dogs sniff trees all the time?” “Because they’re reading the messages left there by other dogs. It’s kind of like email.”

Armed with this rich understanding of the ways of the world, my son was satisfied. He said nothing more on the topic for the past 4 years, except the occasional “I wonder what she’s writing” when we’d walk our dog and she’d pause for a moment …

Yesterday, the budding stand-up comic watches the dog taking a leak in our backyard (as you do when you’re bored). He turns to me and says “I know why dogs sniff their own wee when they’re finished. They’re checking back over what they’ve written. And if they see a ‘b’ where there should be a ‘d’, they-” and here he mimes a dog cocking its leg – “rewrite that part.”

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