Endings and Beginnings Part I

I dislike endings.  Maybe I am afraid of them too.  The end of movies, the ending of  a book (but not a chapter), even the end of my teaching classes.  The worst, however, is the end of the school
 year.  It was even bad when I was a kid.


Back then June was pretty nice.  The days were long and hot and a lot of  us were playing soccer in the big backyard
of a friend down the street. Or the people right next to the soccer yard were very kind and opened up their backyard pool to the neighborhood.  They all had huge backyards on the OTHER side of the street.  We just had normal size backyards.  But anyway, June was nice because school wasn't so hard in June and we just had lots of time to mess around.  Still I think I liked March or April the best.  Sometime still in the thick of the plot long enough away from the end.

Soccer house on left, open pool on right

When the end of June rolled around my family had to prepare for our vacation and close our regular house and make a big travel to our summer house.  Mind you, by the time we got to our summer house, I was very happy and excited.  But that was a known BEGINNING and not an end.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with the price of sheep and being a father?  Well, besides the fact that I just like to reminisce a bit,  it is still the same now that I am a father.  The end of the school year is sad.  The worst was two years ago when my youngest daughter finished three years of pre school and both my girls were done with that school.  We wouldn't be going back there anymore.

But I think the biggest, toughest part about finishing something is the fear of moving on and knowing that you have to start, perhaps, something new or unknown.  Beginnings are often not comfortable.  They are out of the comfort zone.  Not like the middle of March or April.

This year was even more frightening because it would be the first summer where I would be taking care of my daughters by myself.  In last summers my Mother was there for support and a lot of help.  My wife has to stay home and go to her job.  But this year my Mother would not be with us in the vacation as she was staying down in the hot hot South and we would be in the temperate pleasant North.  (We would visit her for a week, but ultimately the heat in the south didn't make it very enjoyable).

For three weeks it would just be me and the daughters.  I mean, the name of my blog is 40 per cent daddy at home and I have been taking care of them , sometimes more and sometimes less, but this was a big move to do everything myself.  To be responsible for having everything in place including three meals a day plus snacks.  Even for a loving care taker father this is a bit daunting.  Or maybe I am only speaking for myself.  But maybe not.  Understand the situation.  There was no other person around to fall back on if something went wrong or got messed up.  No wife or mother or anyone around.

Not only was I travelling half way across the world with them as usual, but then renting the car,  being the driver every time, buying the groceries, making sure the food is in the fridge and the meals will be planned for some time of day to be eaten and getting around everywhere, or even just staying in place.  All up to me. Or should I say down to me?  Granted as happened on the second day, if the food isn't in place to get cooked and eaten, I can fall back on taking them out to dinner.  I know many people cant have that back up.

OK, so I live in the western world and things are easier to take care of, .... but still....... Three weeks.  Everything is my responsibility.  Two little kiddlers.  Just me.

End of Part I

Spider Lake, Michigan

DNA vs Bad Parenting.

Some years ago I posted a video on my personal face book site.  It showed  a kid about 5 or 7 banging a shopping cart into another 30 ish man, not his father, just a stranger, in the waiting line at the supermarket.  The man opens a carton of milk he is buying and pours it on the head of the kid.  The kid starts crying.  I took the post down after a couple days after many people told me the guy SHOULD have poured the milk on the mothers head.  After all, 1) she wasn't doing anything to stop her kid from hitting the man, or not enough and 2) she was the parent.  The kid is her son.  She should have taught him, or disciplined him in general that you don't do that kind of thing.  In other words, it was her fault as a bad parent.

https://www.opposingviews.com/category/man-grows-tired-unruly-boy-hitting-him-grocery-cart-while-mother-ignores-situation-video

I took the video down, but in recent months I have had second thoughts about this whole theme.  Let me explain.

Not my daughter, just some random photo 

For many years and over many topics I was always half worrying, 'oh, i better teach my girls correctly or else people will think I am a bad parent'.  Even now I criticize them when they eat their food with their fingers and ask them if they do that in school and I tell them under no circumstances may they eat with their fingers at other peoples houses.  After all what would the other parents think of my wife and I?  That we couldn't teach our kids to eat with a fork and knife and they don't know how to? Or that we don't care to teach them manners?  And we don't teach them how to be polite and not arrogant and share and say thank you ... and all that stuff.

But lately, I start to think where does some of this stuff come from? It ain't me.  I am not a nasty...  Well, my younger girl, she can be really mean a lot of times and teases.  And it isn't me.  I try to teach her to be nice and not tease her sister.  I tell her 'dont talk like that, say it nicer. Why do you have to be so mean when you say it? I didn't teach you any of that.'  And I didn't.  I am a very pleasant guy and was even more pleasant and nice when I was a small tyke.  I wasn't mean.  I didn't yell at people when I was three and get upset that someone got a pizza with black olives instead of green.  I was happy to get a pizza. But this girl... where did it come from? Or where DOES it come from?

I keep asking her, 'can you say that in a different way?  Please use nicer language and don't yell or call people stupid if they don't remember what you said or don't do it exactly how you want it'. I ask my wife, 'were you a nasty kid?' And she says no. I was a nice kid.  I have to believe her.  But where has it come from?  We teach them to be polite and nice.  

So, i say to myself, 'you know, I am not a bad parent. I don't teach my daughter to be nasty and yell at people, to yell at her father.  I try to teach her to say it nicely.  'You make me angry' she says.  It has to come from inside her.  There must be a DNA for anger.

I have asked this question before and I have been warned that laymen (me) show their stupidity by blaming things on DNA, but, but, where is the behavior coming from? It has to be from some distorted, mutated DNA. OR some DNA from some other family member.  Maybe my side of the family.  Maybe my grandma wasn't a nice person.  Maybe she was mean and passed on a recessive gene for nastiness??  And it is showing up in my daughter, it didn't show up in me or my mother, but my daughter.  Maybe.

And so was it really the mothers fault that her son was banging the other guy with the shopping cart?  Well, she could have yelled at her son harder and physically pulled the cart out of his hands.  But as far as the fact that the kid was doing it in the first place, NO.  Maybe she tried to teach him every day, that is not the way to behave, but he does it anyway.  He ll end up in prison and I couldn't say definitively it was because he had bad parents.  And maybe HE deserved the milk on his head and it taught him that he can do these things, but he will pay the price too.  Maybe his mother didn't and couldn't teach him that. I mean its not like SHE was going to pour milk on his head if he was bad.  It took a stranger to get angry with the brat and teach him consequences.  As a result he wont go to jail.  Although he still might because he has the DNA to be mean.  And he is going to end up knifing someone or smashing someones head on the concrete.  And I doubt that will be the fault of his mother.

Just some thoughts on my part.  Thank you for reading.  Make a comment if you like.

Daddy the Disciplinarian. Why me?

Yes, it is March now and this is my first post for the year.  I always have ideas in my head and stories to tell in the ongoing life of Daddy 40%, but .... I guess I am doing other things that preoccupy my mind and time more.  Not to mention that I am not as good at staying up later to write as I used to be.  But I am not cancelling my blog, like others. In fact I will write more posts this year than last.

So, we were finishing off the Christmas holidays, yes I know, way way in the past now, and we sat down to watch a family movie together.  There is enough room on the couch for all four of us.  Two daughters age 7 and 10,  two parents and potato chips and all.

I am very skeptical about my role as disciplinarian.  This role for the father remains his job well into the 21st century even as mothers became single parents in droves, even as fathers became the primary caretaker of their kids in... well increasing amounts.  Which means they have to be both security blanket AND chief nagger of kids in duality roles.

If fathers are staying home with their kids and taking care of toddlers lives, or even older KIDS lives, why do they have to be the disciplinarian also?  It seems like its a contradiction of roles.  I speculate that even when mothers are acting as single parents, the father is still visiting once in a while and acts then as disciplinarian, or even from afar, "what would your father say?"  I may be wrong.

I recall my Sister in law was very strong with her kids.  My brother had a job in which he was on the road for long periods of time.  But when he came home, he was disciplinarian.

Why?

I hate being a disciplinarian.  Kids always hate, and I do mean HATE, the disciplinarian.  He is doing it out of love, but gets no love back.  Only, "yeah, sure sure", "I'm going I'm going".  Leave me alone, I did it already. Go away". 

It seems that as roles change and become more equal and the sexes become more equal in the role of parenting, women could be more of the hard nose disciplinarian. But really, in stereotyping in the media and television, save for Mommy Dearest, do you ever have the mother being a real terrorizer to the kids?  I mean even in Grimm's fairy tales and TV the mother will never beat the kids.  She may yell at them, but never has physical contact.

Don't get me wrong, hitting kids is in my book wrong, very wrong.  I don't condone it, nor do I think society does anymore, as it did whipping in older days.  But in all the history and especially current history, has there been any mention of mother physically disciplining the kids? Don't you think it happened?

But no.  mom, mother, is always the love giver, the security for the kids.  Dad is shown as the strict upholder of the rules and laws.

Why me?

I am a pretty gentle guy who does not like aggression (except I don't mind it in music).  While I have much heated debate on the verge of conflict with business people and even friends, I stay away from potential violent situations such as bars and conversation with narcissistic, arrogant types. (I could make a good joke at this point, but I will keep it out).  I even stopped Facebook commenting because it was just getting too heated and nasty.

So why am I the one who still has to push them to get to bed each evening?  Why am the one who has  to push my daughter to practice guitar more?  My older daughter doesn't let me kiss her anymore "because I m a boy", and I really miss this.  I mean even to give her a peck on the head, she gets angry.  And it makes me sad.  why cant my wife be in this position for all these things?

I don't have the answer.  If there is anyone out there who has statistics on this issue, I would be interested.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe there are statistics showing dads are not the disciplinarians as much anymore.  I would like to see them. I don't believe it.  As the male parent of the family I am, by default, the enforcer, the punisher.  Something I did not ask for.

So there we are sitting on the couch on the Saturday or Sunday before school starts again.  All the amenities in place.  The movie starts.  A five minute car chase in which people are shot at repeatedly, heads and brains are shown being shot off and people skidding on motorcycles for meters and meters and much of it in slow motion such as where the head comes off.  Then it goes on and the hero threatens a person with death if he continues to stalk someone. He makes his point that he means business and the death will happen.  No questions asked.  Then we are in a bar where the "hero" starts talking about sucking another characters ..... HOLD IT, ENOUGH OF THIS.  WE ARE NOT WATCHING THIS.  STOP RIGHT NOW.    I took the DVD out.  This is not good for a ten year old, let alone a 7 year old.  How can this be a Marvel comics movie?  We are not watching Deadpool 2 and this is final.  Not now, not for many years.  Who got this?

My kids hated me.  They yelled at me.  They glared at me.  They tried to restart the video, but I took it and hid it.  They said it wasn't so bad and none of the words were bad in translation. We ended up watching Spykids 2 which was incredibly stupid but very friendly.   There was bad atmosphere in the house now, but there was no way I was going to let a violent movie put bad ideas into my girls heads.  This was not life, this was not how life should be presented.  This was a bad example of a non existent life with no value whatsoever, especially for kids.  It portrays everything I am against and not how I want my daughters to see life and use as an example to follow, even if we had seen only 10 minutes of the movie.  NO WAY.

I had to put my foot down.  I had to.  No way to :