Dad's House » children

Mean Kids, Nice Kids

dadshouse — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:30:57 +0000

My 17-year-old daughter is an angel! So are her friends!! They are super nice kids!

Or so we’ve always thought.

Now her brother and I are wondering if she’s a little devil, and we’ve been sheltering one of the mean kids all these years.

My son was recently cleaning out his closet (not voluntarily; I made him do it) when he came across a pencil box handed down to him by his older sister. Inside was a note written years before when she was 11 years old. A contract signed by her and her girl friends.

You be the judge: nice kids? or mean kids?

The contract states:

If you tell we will be very mad and have the silence treatment for three days. This goes for everyone! You must keep your voice down while we are doing this. You aren’t allowed to play with or bother us. You may not talk to us until 6:30pm. If you tell anyone we won’t speak to you again. We won’t sign the cards you make. If you follow the contract past the last day of school, we will sit with you at lunch but not in any other grade. You may only annoy anyone who has NOT signed.

The friggin’ contract was signed by 12 girls. The dirty dozen! Twelve mean kids, if you ask me.

Of course, if you asked anyone back when these girls were eleven, you’d hear they were the twelve nicest eleven-year-old kids in the after-school daycare.

Next time someone says your child is one of the nice kids, keep in mind they might actually be one of the secret mean kids. And vice versa! Mean kids being nice kids.

Will this keep my daughter out of a good college?

If so, I’m swallowing the mean kids note and pleading ignorance. Or fiction. Or bull-honkey. Whatever paints her as one of the nice kids!!! Ha!

(Ed.Note – my daughter said I could post this note. We all thought it was funny. She couldn’t believe it existed! A group of 11-year-old girls wrote it years ago at an after-school day care. They were all good kids. My daughter is almost an adult now, and one of the nice kids for sure! This post is meant to be a humorous look at bygone days.)

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Kids Esteem

dadshouse — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:05:16 +0000

My twelve-year-old son had a crappy week last week. He got into some trouble at school. He caught a cold (probably stress related, due to the trouble.) And because he missed lacrosse tryouts due to another commitment, he was relegated to the B team.

Ugh.

When a preteen kid’s esteem is in the shitter, there’s not a lot a parent can fix with just words. I mean, if a kid gets in trouble, he has to do his time. The parent can talk about the what’s and why’s of what happened, but at some point, good parenting means you tell your kid, “yeah, you screwed up. You have to take your lumps. What did you learn from the experience?” etc. Not to mention, if the trouble is bad enough, the child might get grounded or have a privilege taken away at home.

And if a preteen boy is on the B team when all his friends are on the A team, you basically just tell him to keep working hard, keep a positive attitude, try to show the coaches he deserves to be bumped up. And if he doesn’t move up, then keep working hard and be a leader on the B squad.

A kid’s esteem can be a sensitive thing.

Thankfully, my son is made from hardy (or is it hearty) stock. He grasps that his self esteem is under his control. He first focused on erasing his cold – chicken soup, lots of rest, and that old home remedy grapefruit tea.

Then he focused on being more focused at school – being organized; getting his work done neatly, accurately, and on time; staying positive in class and around his classmates. Getting A’s on a couple of tests and quizzes will send any kid’s self esteem skyrocketing.

Finally, he worked his ass off at lacrosse practice, including an optional weekend clinic. (Just by showing up, he scored major points with the coaches.) He loves lacrosse, so showing his coaches a positive attitude was a no-brainer. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to win a bunch of face-offs against the head coach’s son.

My son made the A team. His cold is gone. He’s happy and getting along at school. His self esteem is through the roof. All in the course of a week.

And he basically turned things around for himself, by himself, simply by applying himself.

Now then, regarding my own funky esteem of late… a hot date would do wonders. Any ideas?

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Not All Men Are Monsters

dadshouse — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:00:38 +0000

Dad’s House is venturing into a sensitive topic today: sexual abuse. A blogger at the New Jersey Moms Blog wrote a piece titled The Sexual Abuse of a Liar. In it, she tells a painful story of childhood sexual abuse by a step-brother. I admire the author’s courage for sharing about the horrors she endured.

The victim is now a mom in her thirties with a young daughter. She has decided to make a hard and fast rule that her daughter is not allowed to play in any home where the only adult present is male. She writes:

These monsters are everywhere and they come in all shapes and sizes. They are doctors, brothers, lawyers, policemen and to me the worst of all–fathers. They are parents of your child’s friends and sometimes even teachers. They look like everyone else!

My heart goes out to this woman for the pain she suffered. I’ve met several women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse, and they had deep psychological scars to overcome, and emotional healing to do. I completely understand her not wanting to put a child in danger.

But as a single dad, this approach saddens me deeply.

In my nine years of being divorced, I can’t recall any parent preventing their child from playing with my kids at my house. We’ve even had sleepovers here. Perhaps the parents trust me because they know me as a good man. But also, I practice the same sort of Youth Protection taught by the Boy Scouts and other organizations.

Namely, other children are never alone with me. There is always someone else present, usually my kids.

I don’t take any of it personally. In fact, I’ve taught my kids not to be alone with another adult, whether a teacher, coach, neighbor, uncle, father, mother. But I won’t tell my kids they need to distrust all men. While monsters can be anywhere, they aren’t everywhere.

I understand that every person has fears, and that no one has walked in anyone else’s shoes. At the same time, I feel intense sadness and compassion for any child who wouldn’t be allowed to play at their best friend’s house, simply because the mom is not home, or the friend is raised by a single dad.

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What Goes Down Must Come Up

dadshouse — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:11:25 +0000

Barf.

Vomit.

Toss cookies.

Throw up.

When too much good stuff (not to be confused with good food) goes into a twelve-year-old boy’s tummy, the result is easily guessed. Come join me as I wheel my Dad’s House mobile home over to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog today, and you can find out what really happened on our vacation.

By the way – did you know the word puke was invented by the Bard himself?

I’m referring, of course, to Ralph Shakespeare. (Er, I mean William.)

Click here for the post, What Goes Down Must Come Up.

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Since When Are Dads Not Important?

dadshouse — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:44:26 +0000

Two weeks ago I checked the online homework message board for my son’s sixth grade class and saw a curious thing – plans for a field trip the next day to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This was news to me.

Granted, my son lives in two homes and sometimes Friday Folder messages end up at the other house and get lost in a mass of paperwork. (Sort of like the Nordstrom bags stuffed full of unopened mail in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Too much information to sift through can be overwhelming.)

But a field trip the next day that I knew nothing about was a problem. My son was with me that night and I was responsible for getting him onto the field trip bus at the right time, with the proper mix of sweatshirts, snacks, notebooks, spending money, lunch.

I emailed the teacher for information.

Didn’t you read my emails? she wrote back. I’ve sent several these past few weeks.

I hadn’t seen a thing. She poked around her account and suddenly realized I wasn’t on her email list. Worse, I hadn’t been on it all year!

Apparently, she’d been sending weekly updates to “all” the class parents keeping them abreast of study topics, test dates, homework projects, etc. My ex-wife got all the emails, but since the email list wasn’t public, she had no idea that I wasn’t receiving them. (She might have checked with me early on in the year to make sure I was receiving emails, since we’re trying to be good coparents, but why would she think it’s a problem?)

The teacher apologized saying it was a mistake on her part. She knew we lived in two houses, that my ex and I were divorced single parents, but she didn’t think to add two emails to her list. After all, communication with pretty much every other family went to the mom. (The local doctor’s office does the same thing. Wouldn’t both parents be concerned about their children’s health? Then again, Dad Gone Mad and his readers would probably be thrilled to not have to deal.)

Sigh.

For the record, my son comes to my house most weekdays after school to do his homework, regardless of whether he’ll be at my house or his mom’s that night. I work from home, so this is a good deal for all parties. His mom can focus on her job and know our son is safe. My son gets homework help from me when he needs it. And I get to see my kid a lot.

To find out now that the school has kept me out of the loop all year is frustrating. It’s also not surprising. It’s been a constant battle for the ten years we’ve been part of this school district. Test scores and important notices are usually sent to only one house, usually the mom’s. I’ve talked to teachers, principals, and district administrators including the assistant superintendent to get the problem fixed. I even offered to give one teacher a pile of stamped envelopes addressed to me so she could send me any notes she sent home. (She said that would be more work for her, and refused to do it.)

We aren’t the first two-home family the school has ever dealt with, but apparently I’m the first dad to complain. It sucks to try to be deeply involved with your kids, only to be discriminated against for being a man.

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Investment Advice From a Sixth Grader

dadshouse — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:09:22 +0000

My twelve-year-old son and his friends are showing a nascent interest in financial planning. They want to do more with their money than simply save up for the next new skateboard deck. And so I tried teaching them about investment risk.

I told them about interest-bearing savings accounts and certificates of deposit. I explained the basics of stocks and bonds and mutual funds. I introduced concepts like return on investment, venture capital, sweat equity. I showed them a graph of Google’s stock price as it rose and dipped and rose again.

Serious looks, nodding heads. These boys want to get rich. (As my son’s friend says, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it enables a good lifestyle!)

To test their comprehension of the material, I asked them how a person their age might invest a hypothetical $1,000.

“Something conservative like a savings account,” they said.
“But wouldn’t you want something with higher growth potential?” I asked.
They shook their heads. “No, you want the money to be there, no matter what.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Most financial planners would advise riskier high growth investments when you’re young. With time on your side, you can weather the ups and downs of a changing market while keeping the faith that things will ultimately go up and to the right.

I tried a different tack, and asked how a 95-year-old man should invest his life savings.

“Something super high risk like stock in a startup,” they said.
“But wouldn’t the old man want to be sure his money was there, no matter what?” I asked. “After all,” I explained, “he’s so old, he can’t work anymore. His savings is his only source of income.”
They shook their heads. “He’s gonna die soon, so what does he care? He might as well try to strike it rich and leave a ton of money to his grandkids. If things don’t work out, his family can take care of him.”

Tell that to seniors living off a fixed income portfolio.

Why are these 12-year-olds giving investment advice that’s the opposite of mine? Does the new generation have different expectations about money? Or is this a Silicon Valley thing (where we live), where it’s ingrained in high-tech culture to get rich quick by hitting a financial home run?

Maybe I’m just a lousy teacher.

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