Which came first… the screwed up kid or the screwed up parent

I am the jock-nerd with a sense of humour. Yes that most elusive creature of myth and legend comprised of one-half supreme athlete in complete control over his body and the other half the all-knowing and wisest of the wise(asses). I tell you this so you will understand why having kids was the greatest challenge of my life and one that I was eager to step into. From the day my wife announced she was pregnant and from the day we decided to adopt my son I have been in heaven. Don’t get me wrong… my wedding was something supremely special alright (nudge nudge wink wink), but kids was the ultimate test of the jock-nerd with a sense of humour. I wanted the opportunity to shape a homunculus right from the beginning and I planned for years so I could get it right.

Skip ahead to my kids first birthday party where they invited friends over. This is a big moment for a dad and I don’t think enough appreciation goes into what the dad does in these situations. Yes mom prepared the invitations, harassed the kids until they signed and delivered them. She also baked cakes, cookies, etc… and bought party favours galore and carefully placed them into bags that perfectly fit their tiny fists. But come on. That pales in comparison to what the dad brings to the party adventure for the kids. We are the ones who roll up our sleeves and get right into the fray. We taunt and tease. We do slap stick comedy to make the kids laugh. We crawl on the floor like animals for the entertainment of the group of fickle little humans. We wrestle until our bodies demands Tylenol.

Anyway so there I am organizing the most hotly contested games of musical chairs you’ve ever seen and IT happens. You know what I mean. Three rounds of musical chairs and three bruised and sweaty winners later and some adorable little man-child comes up to me with his doe-like eyes and asks in his best “little timmy” voice… “Where’s my prize?”. I summoned all the compassion I could muster and told him in my silken voice that “you young man did not win so you don’t get a prize. We have a few more games coming up so let’s get rid of the piano that appears to be tied every so delicately to your derrière and see what we can do about not looking like such a chump eh?” At least that’s what it sounded like in my head. I’m not sure what he heard, but from the conversation I had with his dad the next day it didn’t sound like he missed much.

Anyway after the chump goes away defeated in musical chairs and trying to trick me out of a $0.33 toy my wife picked off the back of a truck I laughingly retell the entire story to my loving wife… who does not take it as well as she should. Next thing I know my back is against the wall and my delicate tiny unrufflable wife has her finger embedded firmly in my chest. I didn’t catch everything she said, was more surprised than listening truth be told, but I did get the idea I did something wrong. Now I’m not wrong very often and this was no exception so I gently removed her finger from my chest, careful not to rub the feeling back too briskly, and asked for a little more detail on the infraction she felt I was guilty of. Well drop a ton of bricks on my head if she didn’t agree with the little sub-human that they should all be getting a prize after the games have concluded. I was flabbergasted. I was near foaming at the mouth. There is no way that I was giving out prizes to a little crybaby and that was the end of it. I have to say that the ensuing battle raged for hours with my devastating points and counter-points to her ridiculous urgings that we did not want to risk their fragile little egos being her general argument. In the end we gave each one of those little monsters a prize at the end of every game… not because of their fragile little egos that I would have gladly taken to task (think Kramer in the Karate episode), but because we already bought and paid for those ridiculous toys and I didn’t want them sitting around the house like so much detritus.

I tell this ridiculous and mostly true story to make a point. What the hell are we teaching our children with this crap. OK I don’t want a 5 year old crying because he couldn’t park his caboose in a chair faster than his/her friends. But then we don’t want to tell the junior high kid they failed a class because we don’t want them to feel insecure as it’s a key development point in their lives. And next you cannot tell a high school kid that they cannot do drugs, have sex or any of the other million things we as parents are tasked with teaching our kids because they need to feel free to express themselves. So now we end up with young men and women who have no work ethic and can’t hold a job. They have never gotten in trouble for telling a lie so when they are older and do get in trouble they have no compunction saying whatever comes into their feeble brains to get themselves out of that trouble. These parents are also the parents calling Child Protective Services when they see another parent try to discipline their child out and about. So whose fault is it? Is it the parents for starting down this path with no plan to pull them back into line? Is it the kids for mis-using the freedom and lenience their parents have given them?

One day I was at the public pool with my kids. They were swimming and having a great time as kids are wont to do. When it was getting close to the time we were scheduled to leave I gave my kids a warning. “Hey… ten minutes and we have to leave”. I waited the time allotted and let them know it was time to get out. Now these new friends had given my kids an idea. What if they just didn’t get out of the water when I came back to get them. My kids latched onto it like kids will and you know what happened next. Me standing at the edge of the pool telling my kids to get out without them so much as moving a muscle. They even had the nerve to say “What are you going to do about it?”. It took 15 minutes until they finally got out and we went home. I was upset, but they had asked a good question… what was I going to do about it. Take a minute and think of what you would have done. If you have kids you’ve probably been in this position so you have a pretty good idea how it turned out. Let me tell you what I did. The next day I came home from work at 4pm and it was hot outside. 32 degrees in the shade and a perfect day for the pool. I asked the kids if they wanted to go the pool and they were pumped. They ran for their rooms to change into bathing suits, grabbed towels and pool toys and headed for the car. I got into the car showing my excitement and backed the car off the driveway and stopped dead… I reminded my kids of the stunt they pulled the day before told them I was still mad and we would NOT be going to the pool until I thought they could be trusted to follow my directions. I pulled that car back onto the driveway and we went back into the house. No pool for my kids that day. I never had an issue getting my kids out of the pool again. Everyday we are offered tens/hundreds of opportunities to screw up our kids, but I like to think I got that one right.