This morning, I gave NHL two very important pieces of advice. The first came when I talked to NHL about failure. Lately, we’ve noticed that he isn’t trying to do things that we know he can do. He’ll say “I can’t do it” or “It’s too hard.” If pressed, he does the task easily. We believe the problem is that he’s afraid to fail.
Yesterday, I was watching an online video of the Mythbusters. They were trying to test a myth from the movie Hellboy where a speeding car has it’s hood smashed in by Hellboy and goes flipping over. Kari, Grant and Tory were having problems as the giant metal fist they made and the SUV wouldn’t get into right position at the right time. Suddenly, I remembered the Mythbusters motto: Failure is always an option.
On the way into school today, I told NHL about this (promising to show him the episode later on). He remembered other episodes we saw where they tried something and didn’t get it to work. Specifically, he recalled Adam and Jamie’s Christmas-themed Rube Goldberg device which failed in every way imaginable and a few ways they didn’t imagine beforehand.
Were the Mythbusters frustrated? Sure. Were they upset that it didn’t work right? Of course. Did they quit? No. I told NHL that, when the Mythbusters failed at something, they figured out what went wrong, fixed it as best they could and tried their best again and again and again. I told him that failing at something wasn’t bad. Everyone fails at some point in their lives. It’s how you react to the failure that’s key. If you cry and whine and never try again, that’s bad. If you dust yourself off, figure out what went wrong and try again, you’re learning from your mistakes and turning the failure into something useful.
The next piece of advice came after NHL told me that a classmate of his had called him a “loser.” This hurt me deeply. As I’ve written about before, I was a victim of bullying for many years. I thought back to when I was a child hearing insults be thrown my way and thinking that I had no recourse. I tried to come up with some advice for him. This was my advice:
Don’t listen to them, NHL. You aren’t a loser just because someone says you are. Don’t let their words have any power over you. If someone puts you down or criticizes you, tune them out. Ignore them. Of course, if mom, dad or your teacher say you’re doing something wrong, don’t tune us out. Pretty much everyone else can be tuned out, though, when they say negative things about you. The most important opinion is your own.
My Aloha Friday question for today is: What piece of advice have you given your children recently?
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.
Lately, I’ve noticed a trend with JSL. If I try to explain to him what we’re going to do or why something would be bad, he asks the same question over and over: “And then what?”
To give an example from the weekend, we went shopping. While in the fitting room with him and NHL, they began fooling around, trying to play “Hide and Seek.” Obviously, this wasn’t a great idea. First of all, there are no hiding places in a fitting room. Secondly, it interfered with our getting the clothes tried on quickly. Finally, and most importantly, hide and seek is not a game to play in stores. It’s a thin line from a successful “hide” and getting lost.
After NHL was done trying on his clothes, he went with B while I tried on a new pair of PJs on JSL. I decided to have a talk with him regarding hide and seek and stores. It went something like this:
Me: “You shouldn’t play Hide and Seek in stores. You might get lost.”
JSL: “And then what?”
Me: “And then Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be able to find you.”
JSL: “And then what?”
Me: “And then we’d be sad.”
JSL: “And then what?”
Me: “And then you’d be sad.”
JSL: “And then what?”
Me: “And then you’d cry.”
JSL: “And then what?”
Either JSL was looking for a full story complete with “Once upon a time” and “Then they lived happily ever after” or he was trying to wear me down. I’m not sure he got the point of our talk. Especially when, a few minutes later, he decided to play Hide and Seek with his brother as B paid for the PJs he had just tried on.
For better or worse, NHL often seems like a mini-TechyDad. Like me, he loves math and tries to work it into anything he does. He’s also a natural when it comes to computers. On the down side, he seems to either focus in on what he wants to do to the exclusion of everything (and everyone) around him or his brain goes a mile a minute and he has trouble staying on task.
NHL does have a big advantage I never had, though. Whereas I had to come up with strategies to deal with my shortcomings on my own, NHL has me as a resource. Having personally experienced many of the things he’s going through, I can be there for him and teach him what I’ve learned along the way.
My Aloha Friday question for today is: Does your child strongly resemble (physically, personality, or otherwise) you or your spouse?
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.
Too often, I feels like we’re always yelling at you to do things. We’re rushing to get things done with all the worries and concerns of our adult world weighing on our minds. You’ve grown up so much now that you are in second grade and are so smart that it is easy to forget that you are just a kid. Much of the world is still a mystery to you. Mysteries can be fun and exciting, but they can also be scary and terrifying.
A few days ago, your mother went to a PTA meeting. While she was gone, you, JSL and I went out to eat at Dunkin’ Donuts. We came home with 25 Munchkins for dessert, but you didn’t get any that night. You kept not listening to me and doing the opposite of what I told you. As I gave you chance after chance to earn dessert, you seemed determined to blow it each time and then try to win it back by showing remorse.
After having you sit in your room for a few minutes, I did something that I haven’t done in far too long. Something that I want to make more time to do more often in the future. I sat down on your bed with you and talked, father to son. We talked about things that make you nervous in school. Things that frighten you. Things that go on in your head.
I calmed you down a few times as you got anxious talking about these things. It’s good to get them out. Trust me, I know. I’m the master of bottling up your anxious feelings and it does *NOT* feel good to do so. They’ll just fester in there and make you feel worse until you want to find a quiet, dark spot to cry in.
Keeping things bottled up doesn’t solve anything. Your mother and I are here to talk with you any time you want. Though it might not seem like it when we’re yelling at you to get dressed because we’re running late and you’re watching TV half out of your PJs, we’re on your side. If you’re having trouble with something or someone at school, we want to know. We can’t work to fix it if we don’t know. While I can’t guarantee that we can fix everything that worries you, we promise that we will try our best.
So let’s make these father-son talks a regular event. I’ll pause my adult world worries and just focus in on you. We’ll go into your room, lie down on your bed, shut the door if you want, and talk about whatever worries you. Above all, know that I love you and just want the best for you.
Love,
Daddy
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This Sunday will be October 10th, 2010, or 10/10/10. (That’s 42 in binary. Random geeky fact.) I figured I had to do something special for 101010. I had the idea to both describe my life 10 years ago today and imagine my life 10 years from now. So let’s step into Doc Brown’s Delorian, power up the flux capacitor, set the time coordinates and travel back 10 years.
My Life Circa October 10th, 2000:
Ten years ago, I wasn’t blogging as TechyDad. I wasn’t a father. I wasn’t even married at the time, though I was engaged. October of 2000 saw me embarking on the second biggest step of my life at the time: moving out of my parents’ house to be closer to B. (The first biggest step at that point was proposing to B.) Up until then, I had always lived with my parents. Even in college, when I lived on campus, "home" was at my parents’ house. But now, home would be a long ways away from there in a new place surrounded by streets I didn’t know and a whole new life.
As I wasn’t bringing any furniture up with me (we were buying all new stuff), I decided to do the move myself. I would drive up with a car load of items, move them in during the week and drive back on Friday. This also meant that I was able to spend the Jewish holidays at my parents’ temple instead of the new one I would be attending. (Unnecessary, in hindsight, but it allowed me to feel like this was more transition than abrupt change.)
The company that I worked for at the time was great when I told them that I was moving. They agreed to let me work from home (though one trip in per month would be required). So in addition to setting up my new apartment, I was setting up a home office.
As I got settled in, B would come to visit my new living space more and more. She would stay overnight often so we decided that she should move some of her stuff in. (After all, she was going to live there in about 8 months anyway.) Some stuff turned into more stuff until we were living together completely.
Unfortunately, and here is where I prepare to issue a decades-long-overdue apology, I was afraid of how my parents would percieve this. While I was in college, my father would visit and urge me to "just walk up to that girl and ask her to sleep with you." (No I didn’t do this. My response was "Even if the girl says yes, that’s just proof that I don’t want to sleep with her!") When B and I began dating though, my father’s conservative side came out. An innocent night of us falling asleep in the same bed (nothing happened, seriously!) earned me quite the talking-to. I was afraid of how he would react to us living together prior to marriage.
When my parents came to visit, I would make B hide her stuff in the closet. It was seriously unfair of me to ask her to do this, but she complied. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to B for doing this. I shouldn’t have let my fear of my parents’ opinions guide me. If they had a problem with us living together while engaged to be married, that should have been their problem, not ours.
(Ok, getting back on topic now.)
Besides the move, the biggest event in my life at this time was planning our wedding. We were visiting florists, deciding on catering and making decisions left and right. Of course, this planning can be stressful anyway. Toss in moving and having to leave each other every weekend, and October 2000 was both a very happy time (more time with B! Yay!) and a sad time.
Now back in our Delorian we go. This time, we’re off to the year 2020. October 2020 to be exact.
My Life Circa October 10th, 2020:
I’ll begin with myself and radiate outwards. At this point, I’m 45 years old. I’m likely having trouble accepting that I’m not a young man anymore. I’ll probably have a midlife crisis. How this will manifest itself, I’m not sure. I’m definitely not the "have an affair" type. (I only have eyes for B.) I wouldn’t want a sports car. (Even when in my 20’s, I always considered a car by its practical merits.) I’ll probably be the type to get a giant computer system/home theater/network setup of some sort.
B and I will have been married 19 years. We’ll be looking forward to our 20th wedding anniversary and will likely be planning on what special thing we should do. Considering how old our kids will be at that time – more on this later – our 20th wedding anniversary trip might be a Disney World trip sans kids. (Our honeymoon was in Disney World and this would be a nice reliving of that wonderful experience.)
NHL will be 17. He will be a junior in high school and will be considering college. He’ll probably begin planning which schools to go visit and studying for his SATs. Dating might likely be an issue at this point. (Either he will have dated or he will want to date.) As my dating life (pre-B) was none-too-happy, this might dredge up bad memories (worsening my mid-life crisis…. I think I need a new smartphone!) and fumbling attempts to give dating advice while remaining hands-off.
JSL will be 13 at this point and will have been Bar Mitzvohed. He will now join me in Temple and will count towards the minyan (grouping of 10 men that is required for some prayers to be said). He’ll be in middle school and might be looking toward his big brother leaving for school with mixed emotions. (On one hand, more room in the house for him… on the other hand, he will be missed.) He’ll likely be starting to notice girls and B and I will have to handle two young boys looking to seek out some female counterparts.
TechyDad.com will have just turned 12 and, along with TheAngelForever.com, will have been bought out by Disney-Google, Inc. netting us fifty million. Hey, it’s my future fantasy and I can sell out for millions of dollars if I want to!
And now, it is time to bid the future farewell. Avoiding the temptation to take a souvenir of the future back with me (ok, Doc Brown tossed out the sports almanac… something about "being done before" and "ending badly"), I now return to my life in 2010 with a new appreciation of where I’ve been and where I’m headed.
And now it’s your turn. Hop in your own time travel device and describe your life both 10 years ago and 10 years from now. (If you don’t have a time travel device, I’m sure Doc Brown will lend you his Delorian. Just stay clear of lightning.) Submit your blog posts in the linky below:
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