Category: children

One of the “tricks” I used with my youngest when he got overly upset at something was to generally use a variation on the following theme.

“okay, you might be angry with your brother but you aren’t angry with me”

I always felt that this was one of my most powerful tools and it always worked until yesterday. My little boy is growing up and is now starting to get some of his own ideas.

I tried my patented logic yesterday, but I was told that no he was angry with me. I tried to explain that I wasn’t involved in any disagreements only to be told that when he is angry at mama then he is also angry at me too.

The next day my eldest also managed to get my youngest upset and when I tried to smooth things out I overheard him say “Bad Family”. I didn’t think that the teenage years were here yet, but it looks like they are at least one step closer.

I am not sure how we got onto the topic of math, well big numbers. Somehow I was talking about a trillion and my son was talking about how many billions were in a trillion. Before I could answer he suggested he knew the answer.

His answer – there is 20 billion in a trillion.

I guess I didn’t quite know when to stop so I asked then how many millions were in a billion. I found out that there are only 10.

He is obviously sharp as a tack with your mathematics skills for his age.

I think that I made the problem myself. My wife was listening to “Nightwish” which, to be honest, wasn’t really all that bad but that particular album wasn’t exactly my taste. So, in perfectly non-supportive husband style, I was dissing the album and had actually done it in front of my son.

Well, my son might not like the whole album but there are a few songs that he really loves. I am not fussed what music he listens to but when I end up listening to the same album week in and week out then I start to care.

So I grabbed a few of my albums to test them out, I didn’t have any Symphonic metal groups but I did have some good heavy metal albums so that is what I took. He listened to a bit of Queensrysche but no that wasn’t good enough. We had to go shopping so I popped Alice Cooper into the player in the car. Rather than bringing up how good this album was I thought I would wait to see what the boys thought about it. You could have knocked me over with a feather when my other son asked about the album that was playing.

“papa, is this country music?”

When I was a child, I did not think I had much attitude. If my youngest is any indication then perhaps I didn’t just have attitude but perhaps I had a lot of attitude. I do vaguely remember a day in first or second grade when I must have gotten upset about something. The younger the child, the less they know about what you can really get away with.

After getting pretty upset I decided that I wasn’t going to stay at school and as luck had it I lived only a few minutes away and could easily walk home. I don’t know how they organized it but they did manage to quickly dispatch another teacher. I guess someone had to quickly “catch that little kid” before he got away.

I wonder what the next few years will bring me with my sons.

My wife told my son that once we got into the car, he could have something to eat. It shouldn’t be that difficult as we had just gone shopping. Of course, between paying for parking, loading the car getting everyone in and buckled in something was missed. It only took a few minutes driving to discover the problem was nothing to chew on. Not food, not gum.

So, I suggested why don’t you chew on your tongue but do it softly. It must have seemed like a good idea as he did give it a try. Of course this wasn’t quite as satisfying.

“Papa, it ithn’t helping”

My youngest and I went grocery shopping one day. It probably took longer as there was no real list, and shopping was an exercise of pushing the cart from one end of the store to the other, grabbing an item and thinking of the next item.

During this process we were in the dairy section of the store and I was lost in thought when my boy said daddy look. He was pointing towards a young lady who had a slim figure, was wearing a skirt, had long leather boots and was bending over facing away from us. I was speechless, uh, umm, yes good eye son.

It turns out that the reason the young lady was bent over was she was reaching down to clean up an egg that had dropped onto the floor. He was noticing the mess that she was making and nothing else. Later when relating about our shopping trip to my wife she gave me her opinion.

Yes, for the moment the two of us are on different wavelengths but that will change soon enough.

Even doctor mom gets sick. In this case means a simple cold. I actually don’t get too stressed about getting sick as it doesn’t happen very often. But I do get stressed about my boys getting sick for two different reasons. The first is you hate to see your loved one sick, and the second is someone may have to take time off work to take care of the little tyke.

The boys, especially my youngest loves to cuddle with his mom. I was a bit worried about the whole get a cold thing so I said that nobody can breath in this house until mama is well. It turns out you need to be a bit less literal when speaking with children but that is another story

Later in the day I was asked by my son David if he could go over to a friends house. I suggested that normally you don’t invite yourself over to someone else’s house.