Holding Him Back

"So, what have you decided?"




I'm in the dentist chair, puzzling over the question. My dentist adds that he read my post about whether or not to send Gabriel to school this year and I muster a nod of recognition. The topic of when to start a child in school is an exhaustively discussed one and, for the most part, the advice I've received is a chorus of, "What's the rush?... I waited... My daughter was fine early but... my son was... well... uhm..." Or struggled, or what have you.  Parents of the autumn-born who were particularly experienced and informed on the subject and the advice was all valuable. There was also a serendipitous barrage of articles on childhood and education that advised us to sit tight and hold him back a year more. Last week, we even encountered a parent who had found her 18-year-old son foundering and dropping out of his first year of university -- an account that made me ponder the math if her son was still only 18 years old in the spring after his freshman year.

Unwittingly, he is looking forward to the graduation from day care that the rest of his classmates will celebrate.  He is not, however, going to graduate with his friends. The social disruption for him will be a challenge. Close friends that he has had a lot of history with will be moving on and his friendships with those kids may end or require a lot more work to maintain as routines change. The social connections are already changing form as this fork in the road emerges.

Still, we have to look long term rather than reinforce the social expectations.

As great as he is in our eyes (except for when he is too tired to listen to us or insists that his diet consist exclusively of starches, or as I put it, "his whites") we would rather not have him spend the rest of his childhood and adolescence pressured into playing catch up. If we made the move to include him with the older peers who are moving on over the next little while we will be doing him an injustice. With an extroverted only child, who is at turns a nurturing leader of younger kids and displays great vulnerability trying to find a random kid to play with or be accepted by, we suspect that he will play to his strengths if he stays behind with kids who are a little younger than him.

While his daycare suggested there was a risk of Gabriel getting bored while in the same room for another year, I recalled a concept from my studies in Education - over-learning. If he is covering similar topics or themes in the coming year, I am fine with that. I get the impression that Gabriel is more of an analytical mind and that he may continue to process familiar knowledge in different ways. (Recently he wanted me to "play" with his Hot Wheels with him. For some reason our play consisted of sorting out all his dinkeys and separating the Hot Wheels from the non-Hot Wheels cars.

If he grows bored with too-familiar lessons and stories, perhaps there is an opportunity for him to play more of a nurturing or empathetic role. Since making our decision to keep him in daycare for another year, we told the daycare that we are prepared to adapt what we do at home to ensure that we are on the same page as the staff at the daycare in encouraging the leadership, empathy and social development that we would like to support in the coming year.

We have been conscious from day one of Gabriel being big for his age and my wife and I still tell one another that he was never that small when we see newborns. We have always seen his size as presenting a mixed blessing when he is in school and it is probably better for us to embrace that and get him accustomed to that size distinction rather than try to get him to blend in with a group of kids who are three to nine months older than him. When he is with younger and smaller kids we can prompt him to be gentler with them and perhaps he will get the sense of the responsibilities that come with being the big kid and take the opportunity to protect with his size and maturity.

All in all, we have concluded that it is better and lower stakes to hold him back now rather than pressure him throughout his school years to keep up or hold him back later in life when the stakes are a little higher than they are now.

Growth Spurts and Tough Talks to Ponder and Forego

One of the highlights of each fall has been "school" pictures of Gabriel that have been taken at his daycare.  The proofs from this year's efforts sit in front of me and in the place of the unconscious playfulness from the sets when Gabriel was on the cusp of 2 and then 3 years of age there are two options to choose from which are a stark contrast from those previous sets.

Apart from the fact that there are merely two carefully posed shots instead of a set of nine which were enchanting with their spontaneity, there is the suggestion that Gabriel has stretched out and that there is a leanness which indicates baby-fat has been shed and there is that boyishness seemed to be looming, but now is clearly evident.  In previous years the shots included moments of closed-eyed laughter and an impish smirk that suggested a bit of interaction with a photographer who knew how to capture the age group before them in all their innocent beauty.

Self-portrait, feet. Gabriel Hanlon, October, 2015.

As Gabriel approaches 4, the suggestion in the pictures is that he is more ready to engage with people and take direction - albeit from a photographer.  The poses show more evidence of a cue or request being acknowledged than a playfulness that was deferred to when he was younger.  The shots seem a little stiffer and no where near the poignancy of the shots from last year and the year before.  These shots, commemorating 2015 and his fourth autumn mark a different phase.  Much of what has happened seems to indicate that as well.

Two days ago when I spoke to him on the phone there was an attentiveness to the conversation or a clarity to his train of thought that made me think that time jumped ahead a year rather than a few hours since I had dropped him off at daycare.  Apart from that, he flipped the bird for the first time during Thanksgiving dinner, an indication that his surroundings are not as insulated and certain as they used to be. As he approaches school age, there will be more and more occasions where his peers initiate him to those less innocent skill sets and the hard conversations begin.

There are other hard conversations to weigh as well and with those the reminder that he is still a few years away from memories that will stick with him. One of my rituals with Gabriel from as far back as "the bucket stage" has been to take him to pizza with friends on Saturdays.  He has graduated from the bucket to his own place at the table and a pizza of his own.  Earlier this week one of those friends from that Saturday ritual, Mike, a stoic retired train engineer who particularly bonded with Gabriel, passed away after a few years of health struggles and informing us each Saturday that he was tired.

As I ponder breaking this news to Gabriel, I am inclined not to bother.  During Mike's final illness over the last few months, Gabriel never expressed concern about his absence and I wondered if it was a case of him not recalling Mike in his absence.  As I lean toward not sharing the news with him, I suspect that he has already forgotten Mike, though I hope there may be some trace recall of the particular fondness that they had for one another and an occasion where Gabriel asks after him and allows the opportunity to recall a friendship and discuss a simple reality of the passing of time.

The Generational Thing

There have been a few times over the past few weeks where friends have talked about differences between our generation and our parents' and have rationalized the differences between us as a consequence of generational differences. The differences, though significant, are hard to accurately delineate to one type of parenting versus another.  The technological changes, the evolution of gender roles and the sizes of families are just a handful of the differences that distinguish current parents from their own parents.

Many of my friends and I describe our anticipation of sharing things with our kids. The number of times that it is an aspect of pop culture is significant: whether the Muppets, Star Wars and its multiple trilogies, the music we grew up on (that has never seemed to go away) or countless other things we are looking forward to laying ourselves on the line for with our kids, despite our knowledge that there will be a day when our kids deem themselves too cool for anything that their parents want to talk about.  There may be, in my own case, the off chance that Gabriel will clamour for tickets to the Foo Fighters with good ol' mum and dad, but he still might outgrow that.

For the time being, there is the excitement to share with him the latest books by the kids authors we have championed during our brief stint as parents, the occasional exposure to the Muppets and Bugs Bunny that has not altered his obsession with the Cars movies.  Still I rejoice in his recall of the occasional jazz piece that he recognizes, likes even and - most tellingly - identifies when there are different arrangements.  I stake so much in passing these things on to him and it leaves me wondering if my folks invested themselves in passing such things on and, more importantly, if I am passing anything else on to him.

From my parents there are things that have come my way in the pop cultural vein but it may have been more incidental than of the, "you have to listen to this" vein of John Cusack's Rob Gordon character in High Fidelity. (I'm hoping to get Gabriel to read the book first and then I'll risk a double feature of that and Say Anything... on a Saturday family film night during those very years when he will be tuning us out and dealing with a period when most relationships simply confound an adolescent.  If I'm lucky, he'll patiently indulge dear old Dad and ask what that big thing was that Diane had all those x's in.) From my parents I can trace my fondness for Burt Bacharach, Stan Rogers, Bill Cosby (still a comic genius, but I'll introduce Gabriel to Bob Newhart recordings instead) and Abba.  My father was quite discerning, more than he would ever let on, with his movie choices and having Gallipoli among the first tapes to visit out VCR has imparted a permanent reverence for its director, Peter Weir. I'm not sure if any of it was intentional, however.

The most telling image that comes to mind as I reflect on all of this, though was that rainy day in 1977 when my brothers and I saw Star Wars. To that point we had our occasional trips to the theatre for Disney fare and after a full summer of the hype that built as Star Wars became the biggest grossing movie of all time - beating Gone With The Wind which my parents, thankfully, never thrust upon us unsuspectingly. We had gone with the Manuels, who we'd all but grown up with and I was enthralled by finally piecing together this movie that had merely been in the ether for me to that point.  Dad stayed home and when we returned from the movie with our new wallets of pop culture cache loaded with one of the bigger deposits that we would pocket in the decades ahead, he glanced out of the basement of our split entry home with a small but noticeable gash in his forehead.

He spent that time in the workshop, starting to give shape to the unfinished basement that would eventually accommodate the TV room, the second bathroom and fourth bedroom that would ensure we three boys would have the space we would need as we headed on our journeys through adolescent and into bigger bodies and more sharply defined personas. Renovations and carpentry were a significant recollection from childhood.  My parents renovated the first house we lived in during the five and a half years we were there, finished the basement in the second and my father built the house where he and mum have lived since 1983. Throughout those years, especially when he was working on the furniture and cabinetry that he poured himself and his discipline into I came away with the metaphor of that discipline in the careful measurements of course but also the dedication to the sanding and finishing of the fine work that rendered the unvarnished wood one of the most intimate and proud moments of contact my hands will ever know.

When I look at where I am now and ponder the extent to which I avoid the tasks which my father is so expert at, I think of Neil Postman's book The Disappearance of Childhood which operates on the notion that childhood is disappearing not only because of the rush to make them adults but more tellingly the efforts adults make to arrest their development to a stage of childhood or adolescence which they do not wish to depart. When I think of my desire to cram the three seasons of The Muppet Show that I have on DVD (BTW can somebody get off their can and release the last two seasons!!!) ...uhm, where was I... right... I wonder how grown up an example I am setting for Gabriel when I strive to connect on the pop culture level.  (I am not 100% certain if it is my level or his.)

When I take my anticipation of sharing of pop culture and compare it with the example that my father set and the small amount of time that had for the things he enjoyed, unless the time he devoted to leaving his mark on the space we lived in was infused with his passion - the evidence would suggest that - there is a sense that the generational difference is not something that I can boast as an indication of progress from my father's generation to mind.  I think of the time that Gabriel spends with my father-in-law and the way that there is something more constructive or productive in the way that they ultimately work together.  I see that and beam with pride when Gabriel picks up the garbage in his path on a train platform and takes the mission of depositing that garbage where it belongs.

I take some hope in the small lessons of patience that I may teach Gabriel when we are out with the cameras and acknowledge that there is probably an openness among my generation of males that my father's may not have felt free to tap into, but in their way and with their sacrifices and discipline there is still much to honour.  I hope I can do more than merely aspire to pass that on.

The Making of a Dad Band

One of my outlets on a regular basis has been to get together with a few friends to play guitar.  We actually started playing together 11 1/2 years ago, a mark that certainly gives me pause about how quickly time has passed since we first started gathering in the basement apartment I was in at the time. We had religiously stuck with the routine every week on Thursday nights. over the course of that time, doctorates were completed, musical trends came and went and I slowly discovered 1990's alternative rock, which I had essentially missed due to my travels or only discovered via the back door route of covers played by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.

Those evenings were simple affairs.  We'd unpack, play our first three songs and order pizza that we could normally count on having in another 30 minutes or so. There were musical discoveries, challenges that would turn into benchmarks of progress as we found a way to master them, rules about forbidden groups or songs. I still, after all this time, refuse to waive my Eagles veto.

We have seen our circle expand and contract over that course of time and we are at a solid core of three despite our open door to additional dad-players, especially those with drums or a bass. Obligations expanded as one of our trio became a Dad. He furtively missed a Thursday while he was getting acquainted with his daughter. A few months later twin daughters arrived for the most talented of our trio.

The weekly ritual disappeared with those demands but we are working our way back into a routine of at least a month. Those night continue to be blessed with as much conversation as ever, but the talk turns to the kids where it once turned to music trivia and whether or not our mention of certain musicians at certain times coincided with their deaths.  I assure you we have never played Boney M and probably only mentioned them in reference to their contribution to the Christmas muzak we had grown familiar with.

The nights are less frequent and the pizzas even less so. Guitar is now on Fridays instead of Thursdays and there is a dram of scotch rather than a 2 litre bottle of soda water, which we named "flavourless" in mild self-deprecation of the pop we played as well. Over the years the conversation has continued to be good as we have marvelled at the achievements of those we have played, occasionally cursed the slow wheels on the studio recorders the Beatles used, made copious references to The Big Lebowski, Spinal Tap and Christopher Walken's seminal appearance on SNL.

Those things are balm and magnet that keeps us together as regularly as we come together every couple of weeks. We muse occasionally about performing for an audience and conclude that it will most likely be at a birthday party. If that is the case, we will have to hurry up and do it while we are still cool to the kids. It amy be nothing more than a distant goal and one that would require a bit more work that our intermittent meetings might allow. There may be an unplumbed symbiosis that we would unwittingly draw upon, or a sense that the stakes playing without a net would be minimal or minor compared with other things that we have grappled with over the last decade and change.

The one thing we all share is a desire to pass the baton on to the kids, especially if any of them take up an interest in bass or percussion and share our fondness for Crowded House, Talking Heads or R.E.M.  All of the kids are exposed to music in various ways and taking lessons and their progress probably give us more pride than any progress we make with more esoteric chord progressions that were beyond us when we all began.

Street-proofing the Extroverted Child

It was evident from very early that my son was going to be an extrovert. I can cite several occasions where he has "worked the room" like a campaigning politician out on the hustings while my wife I and fell consigned to the background. We look on in wonder while we try to assess everyone else's tolerance for this three-year-old who can be remarkably charming when he wants to get to know people. My wife can cite occasions where trips to the zoo involve meeting a fellow tyke, bonding at the penguin plunge and then visiting the rest of the animals and having a bit of lunch over the course of the rest of the day.

It has been the case throughout his life, whether visiting his grandfather in the hospital or starting day care on the cusp of turning one and leaving Dad behind without the least trepidation about being in this room full of unknown kids. In our condominium, he has been introducing himself to everyone since her could say his name.

Earlier this summer, however, he wandered off from his day care group while out on an excursion. It did not surprise us, but we were just as horrified at the possibilities. 

From early on we have been conscious of the need to make him not so trusting and open with people and not expose himself to the risks with strangers, but at the same time we have not wanted to erode his innocence and unduly inhibit him from interacting as freely as he does. He is incredibly open and friendly in most situations with people of all ages and we do not wish to deny him that aspect of his personality. There are risks in him walking up to that stranger that we would most likely prefer to keep him away from, but at the same time he may also be building a pool of people who would recognize him and look twice if they saw him with an adult other than my wife or I.

I believed that he has the confidence with people that would make him a harder target. He is likelier to be at the centre of a group of friends rather than the periphery and in need of being at the centre. In our condominium he has incidentally built a network of vigilant eyes who know him well enough to get suspicious if he is not with us. That was the case with him wandering off from his daycare group, but that is a consequence of the safeguards that are part of the routines and procedures at the daycare. In our condominium, where he knows half the puppies in the building and most of the adults who are on our floor there is a sense that there are people who know him and recognize him and us well enough to know when something is awry if he is in the wrong company. But that network has not been tested and we do not wish test it.

We can not be certain that he will always be that confident with his friends and that he will not make himself vulnerable by seeking the attention or friendship of strangers who may be waiting for such an opportunity to pose a threat to him. There have been times when his attempts to strike up a friendship or a brief period of companionship at the playground do not succeed and he is at a loss for what to do on his own while other kids play together or simply go home with their parents.

We have tried nudging the matter of caution with strangers onto his radar with various children's books that attempt to address the issue and the best of the bunch is still "Little Red Riding Hood." (There is a version populated by trucks instead of wolves and girls but that is too cringeworthy.) Other books on the theme strike me as too didactic to hit the mark in the memorable but carefree way I think is required. My wife and I seize our teachable moments as well with the emphasis on generalization rather than "stay away from her," but there is no certainty that the objective of this lesson is ever achieved. I heard from a mother a few weeks ago that there was a test with children on how they would behave with a potential lurer or children predator. The test showed that despite the training and safe words that parents drill their kids on, they are still prone to being tempted into danger. (Damn puppies!)

There is the hope that there will be something about my son's extroversion - whether his confidence with strangers or his ability to make friends - that would make lurers more reluctant to fix on him, but I know that is mere wishful thinking. A parent's hope is not enough and we can only hope that the daily routine imparts some caution to him over time and keeps it rooted there without making him more frightened that he ought to be. Open, but cautious.

Dad On Duty

A few months after Gabriel was born, I was able to attend a New Dads course. At this point, 3 1/2 years after the fact, I can't recall if it was two or three sessions but I can remember those of us who chose to converge being representative of a new generation of men, whatever that might be. We caught and corrected ourselves when we risked talking about babysitting our children. Others in the group bristled with the tension and challenge that came with fatherhood and in some there were hints of baggage that would cause or had already caused difficulty and left some overmatched for the task of being open and vulnerable to their prime vocation.

I have been capable of talking or writing a good game when it comes to being a father, but there are, granted, times where patience runs thin and there is a reversion to whatever offers expedience or an easy response.  In those moments where I'm losing my temper or just cutting corners to get out the door or the like I feel like the laggard of the partnership. For example:

When brushing teeth during the bedtime routine, I more often than not forget to wash his hands and face.  Same thing with sunscreen when heading out for the day.

Last week, I left a developmental screening report from his daycare in my backpack neglected long enough to become a sopping wad in the torrential rains that fell last Friday. A great "my dog ate it" variant.

I've let him stand instead of sit. (Discuss in your groups.)

I often forget his water bottle when heading out and have to buy him bottled stuff en route.

I mix up his indoor and outdoor shoes at daycare and bring him home in the wrong pair.

I had refrained from slathering every part of his zone with cream before sealing up his diaper.  I also preferred the pull-ups over the tape tabs even though I recall practicing with pins and cloth in the 1980s when I took a babysitting course and was willing to go the cloth route for the first few weeks of his life until I was overruled in favour of more sleep.

I occasionally rush ahead a step or two on a Lego project when his attention has drifted instead of trying to recapture it or setting things aside. I mean, c'mon, it's Lego!

I skip entire pages rather than mere adverbs in his books when it is time for him to nod off and he is adamant about his quota before turning in.

I've laughed when I shouldn't such as the time that he squeezed a bottle of ketchup and geisered a wad of the red stuff onto his shirt, his hair and myself.

Those little things out of each week or day or hour leave me conscious about the opportunities that are constantly available to me and leave me convinced that I'm the second-stringer or the laggard in the task of raising Gabriel.  I wonder if I have taken the verb "father" more literally than I care to admit.  "Father" doesn't have the long term connotations that the verb "mother" does and perhaps there is something wired in me, despite my better intentions, that prompts me to slack off or become reluctant to put on the original Disney score that he prefers when my jazz is playing.

I do, however, remind him to look someone in the eye when he says, hello, thank you, good bye or sorry.  I stroke his forehead or rest a hand on his stomach when he is too restless to find sleep and I get the chance to tuck him in or settle him down.  I've gently pointed out the proper use of "because" and "so" which he has mixed up regular in phrases such as, "It's raining because I'm wearing boots." I've even tried to work a second language into his head by practicing Japanese and a bit of French with him.

Perhaps it all stems from being the first one to leave the house after he arrived and in the nearly four years since he was born, starting with that rush to the pharmacy to get some formula while we were still waiting for the milk to come in.  In that time there have been so many moments that I have missed out on, things I have only heard afterward, secondhand.  I have not been synched with his every need the way that my wife has whether it is from the moment of his arrival or going back to the closer synchronization that they once shared.

Regardless of the cause, when I am on duty alone there always seems to be an error or two or an oversight to make me self-conscious. My wife assures me that there isn't a wrong way and that is a brief bit of balm. Last week, though, when I had full on Dad duty to put Gabriel down for the night, he was finally signalling it was all right for me to go with the see-saw rhythm of his sleepy breathing. I slipped out of his bed as stealthily as a could and promptly activated the hard rock guitar riffs of one of the toys that did not get put away (by me? by him?) before turning in.  A froze on the spot as a litany of curses went through my head.  I paused to see if I could detect some disturbance in his sleep. On the crest of his snoring he uttered a drowsy, "I love you," and remained asleep.

Whew.