Zen and the Art of Escape.

When your 13 year old son comes home from school in the middle of the day, you want it to be for a good reason. When he stops you while you are busy trimming a hedge and you are having one of those pleasant mornings with your youngest child, you want whatever caused him to leave school to be merely due to an over reaction. When you respond to him and he falls into your arms and starts to sob, you want to find the person who caused this and demand to know why? why would you cause this harmless child to have to limp home and sob on his fathers shoulder.

You want to defend him, cure him, ease whatever pain it is which has caused him to tremble. You want to find who is responsible and make things right; you want to show him that you have control, like you did when he was a toddler and he skinned his knee. When you find that your son is the cause of his pain you, naturally, want to know who pushed him to do what he did. You want that other child punished, you want the school to do something to keep your kid out of trouble.

You want the other kids parent to call you up and yell at you, while you stay calm...just to show who the better person is. You want to tell him, that "my son was just defending himself" and if his kid had any self-control or respect for others he would not be bleeding. You don't want your son to be the responsible one. (the other parent never calls)

When your child comes home in the middle of the day, interrupts your day, starts sobbing in your arms- you give him a glass of water, you hold him, tell him you love him--you want to be upset---you want it to be simple. When he tells you it was his fault. You want him to see what he did, you want him to apologize, you want him to see how he can change.
, you want things to be normal... you want him to go back to school and have all the other kids like him. You want to blame someone; his mother, his not having many friends during elementary school, his lack of freedom,----you want it to be about him and not you.

You want your day back.

Magic

I watched my wife work magic this morning. Seriously, it was magic.

See, our three year old is pretty picky about what he wears, for example, he must wear brown shorts and will only wear certain t-shirts.

This morning, being the morn o' laundry, everything he wanted to wear was dirty. As I pulled shirt after shirt from his drawer only to have him reject them, I came to a point and a shirt which I was ready to force onto him if negotiation did not work. This particular shirt is basically a striped t-shirt, the lines are made up of different bugs. " Look! this shirt has bugs on it! isn't that cool! He was mildly interested. I had his attention but not enough to have him put the shirt on. Then my wife got into the act.

"What kinds of bugs are on your shirt?" she said. He quickly identified a spider. She found a beetle. "hey, if you put this on I will read you the poem about Alexander Beetle."
He was skeptical about the shirt at this point but definitely wanted to hear the poem, so she gave him the first line " I found a little Beetle, so that beetle was his name, And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same." He put the shirt on and in no time she was reading to him from A.A. Milne's book.

Had it been me dealing with him, there would have been a struggle, some tears and eventual acceptance of defeat. Usually that means the kid wears the shirt and me being frustrated that he does not see that a shirt is just a shirt...."so put it on." My wife on the other hand, and this by the way is not the first time I have seen her do this type of engagement, actually made him interested in it.

Ruthie: Cartographer

Ruthie and I were looking at the Eugene/Springfield bicycle map; Ruthie was quite impressed that we could find the spot on the map where our house is. She asked me what the map was for so, I explained that it is a drawing of the different paths one could take to get somewhere. This map specifically shows the easiest and safest ways to bicycle to those places.

She was really taken with the Idea that someone drew a picture of this and that she could do the same thing. So, Ruthanne came up with this:

Basically, it is a map showing the four schools we all go to. I would have to have her orient me; the two bear stickers represent two of the schools and there are two circles that represent the other two.

Charlie scares me!

About a year ago Charlie got hold of a very large knife with frosting on it. (which was more than adequate to cut cake with) He was in the middle of the room with several people standing to far away from him to just stop him. It was as if he was about to attempt to hold everyone hostage with this knife.

When I saw him with the knife, I had one of those "noooo" slow motion moments. Before I could get the knife away from him he stuck the tip of the knife in his mouth and licked the frosting off. ugh.

It was a scary two seconds.... Charlie has absolutely no qualms about using knives: to cut up cheese, put peanut butter on bread, cut the bread up.
He is a very resourceful little man; I have no doubt that he gets it from his sister.

I could be busily, working in the yard, cleaning the house or wasting time on the computer (not paying attention to the kids) and find them having a four course lunch: grapes, apples, cheese, bread, carrots. It used to be that they would tell me when they are hungry but now they don't even bother.

It is kind of nice; the only draw back, really, is that they don't clean up and there is sure to more of a mess than there would be if I had provided lunch for them.

On the plus side if I pass out, impale myself with gardening tools, drown in the sink or become otherwise incapacitated I know that the kids won't starve.

The Wisdom of Ignorance

I remember vividly how it felt to be an expectant father for the first time. It was scary. I was 25 and still trying to get over my troubled adolescence; how would I be able to process my shit while trying to raise a child? I was not afraid of changing diapers or feeding this little being; the fear I had originated in my emotional instability and that all my prejudice, scars and fears would get transferred onto him.

The step I took, which is probably the best thing any new parent can do, is to admit that I was ignorant then, I started reading every handbook on parenting and father hood I could get my hands on. I worked at a great bookstore....shameless plug.....called Sam Weller's, at the time, so had access to several titles, bad and good, about parenting.

At the time I was reading almost anything with the words Zen, Buddhism, and meditation in the title so, when a book with a title that was something like; Zen and the Art of Fatherhood came into my view I read it. I hated it. I did not get it at all. Now, twelve years, three kids and a couple of years of Zazen practice, I might have a better understanding of what he was trying to say. (I know it might be helpful if I could maybe give a glimpse of the contents of that book but it has been almost thirteen years since I last saw it, and that I hated it is what I remember.)

From what I remember the premise of the book was: that you don't know what you are getting into but don't worry, if you are aware you will know what to do, and you will notice when you have messed up.

I was much more aware of my lack of knowledge back then, my first child benefited from my state of mind, I was much more engaged; even now as I am trying to shift to parenting a 12 year old I am still more involved with him than I am with the younger ones.

The challenge for me is to keep remembering that, despite what I know about taking care of kids, I still need to pay attention to them as if they both are my first. (my kids are now, this second, trying to get my attention from my all important blogging...sigh. Don't they know that writing about my philosophy of life is so much more important than living it? Durn kids.)

Amazing Things My Daughter Says

That she speaks is amazing to me.....Not because she had trouble with language acquisition or something, only because that is what it is like to be a gushing parent.

I was getting the 2 year-old to sleep, and could not reach my coffee, so I asked my daughter if she would grab it for me. I thanked her for doing me this small favor. Her reply was "That's what kids are for; to do favors for their parents."

........of course I could not just leave that where it was; I had to confuse her by suggesting that, that is not her life's purpose. I had to remind myself not to get too philosophical with the four year old, so, in the end I just agreed with her.

"hey would you do daddy a favor? Go to the store and buy me some beer, then go scrub the bathroom floor"

"No"