proud papa

I have a lot to be proud of, as a dad. My boys both play soccer; I coach the older one's team, and we just finished our second season together. We had lost three in a row but won our last game by one goal. It was a close game and very exciting. My older son plays defense and has come a long way in the two seasons that I've been coaching him.

My younger son also had his last game of the season, unfortunately it was at the same time as my older son's (so I didn't see it) but I heard afterward that his team scored 13 goals, and that he personally scored ten of them. I know that sounds like a cruel amount of scoring, but he plays in the Under-6 division, and generally the kids don't know that anybody is keeping track and they pretty much score like crazy anyway. It's not a matter of running up the score, since theoretically the kids don't know we're keeping score and we never tell them that anybody "won".

My older son is also an avid reader. He's only nine, so his tastes haven't branched out yet, but he reads a LOT. At least an hour a day, usually in bed before he goes to sleep. Being a voracious reader myself, I am ecstatic that my son is showing signs of following a similar path. I credit MOST of my lifelong learning to reading independently. No offense to any of my teachers or parents, but when you have a kid who reads as much as me (who read the encyclopedia and dictionary for giggles), the standard education system is really just running alongside (and sometimes behind) down the road of life. That's a whole 'nother subject; maybe I'll tackle it in this venue someday. Anyway, my older son starting reading early, and took to chapter books the summer before first grade. He's 9 now and reading at a fairly high level. I read all of the same books that he does so I know what going on in his books and can discuss them with him if he has questions. It also helps when he's reading books like the Animorphs series and I can get the references to mind-controlling alien slugs or jokes about which character would say what in a given situation. The Animorphs books in particular present emotional and interpersonal issues that can be pretty intense, so I make it a policy to never be more than one book behind him as he goes through the 50+book series. He also likes our old Calvin and Hobbes collections, and has dabbled in The Dangerous Book for Boys since my dad gave it to me for father's day(see my other blog, Handy Husband, for some other outcomes of that gift).

I have also decided to start pre-screening a couple of books recently hoping that they would be at the right level for him and that he would be interested in them. I started with the first Artemis Fowl book and he ended up liking that a lot. I am also looking for books at his level that might break out of the "young kid as hero" theme in order to broaden his horizons a little bit. I was reading Stephen Donaldson, Stephen King and James Clavell by the time I was 12 and I hope to prepare him a bit so he can be ready for that level of reading by that time too.

My younger son has taken a very different learning path -- he is extremely active and has developed the language skills a little later than his older brother. He is famous for his malapropism and, uh, imaginative sentence strings. Very stream-of consciousness. He has, however, essentially taught himself to read and he is not quite six. We have read to him every night pretty much since birth, but he has absorbed the sight words and can now read just about anything you put in front of him. We also have been teaching him basic addition whenever he expresses an interest, he likes hearing about "money math" and often wants to discuss time and clock-reading. The best result of all this came up this past weekend also: he and I were in an Office Max looking for binders and came across the "learning workbook" section of school supplies. He was drawn to them, and wanted to get one that is geared toward basic reading, writing, and math skills for K-1st graders. Once we got it home, he devoured it. Since he can read well enough to read the instructions and accompanying psuedo-story elements, he sat there for almost three hours coloring patterns, writing, and doing basic math. He kept it next to him during dinner and had to be reminded to keep eating his pizza, which is his favorite dish. He got up this morning and dove right back in, loving every page and kicking butt on every one. Keep in mind that this is a kid who has been hard to deal with (due to his active nature) since he was in utero, and only recently has developed an attention span of longer than 30 seconds. Soccer has been great for him, but we never thought academics (or sitting still) would be anywhere near his thing.

I am excited. I am proud. I am glad my boys are using their brains for stuff other than Xbox, though a little Xbox is alright with OG (Original Gamer) dad. My wife and I have a little different educational philosophy than most parents -- click here to see my post regarding the boys' school -- but I am happy with the way things are going!

ever deeper

No posts for two months -- a big no-no for the committed blogger! I don't care. I wasn't entirely sure why I got into this in the first place; although having a lot of time on my hands and a penchant for writing helped. However, keeping a diary in the public domain goes against my introverted nature as well as my better judgment. That’s probably why, even though I had the time, I did not have the inclination and have not posted regularly enough. Oh, well – I’ve got more to say. It’ll come when it comes.

I'm married and have two kids, a dog and a house. My wife stayed home for many years, mainly for our kids' sake; we agreed that she would take on most of the home-related duties like cooking, bills, and taking care of the kids and that I would go to a job every day and bring home money. It's been tough financially, but whenever we revisit the decision it always works out that we would rather have her home with the kids than have a couple of extra bucks and less time or energy to enjoy it.

However, my long term vision has always included encouraging her to go back to school to get her Master's degree. We waited until the kids were both old enough to be in school so it was less of a scheduling burden. When she finished her first year she thought it would be a good idea to get a part-time job as well and start contributing to the family finances.

Unfortunately, I was unemployed for five months. An interesting experience; staying home every day after working almost every day for many years is weird. When you are on vacation, your time is limited; you get an urgent feeling to spend your time off wisely because soon it will end. When I was unemployed I had an urgent feeling that I needed to spend my time wisely, but in order to become re-employed as soon as possible. I found myself needing to spend almost as much time dealing with the consequences of unemployment as I did working. However, that eventually ended and it became frustrating and boring to not have a destination and a goal every day, with new problems coming up regularly to face and overcome. The ongoing challenge while unemployedwas to survive and find work, but there was only so much I could do on a daily basis toward that end.

So (long story made excruciating), for the last few months, she has been working her butt off and I have been home instead. I took over some of the home-life duties, but kind of grudgingly; since school and part-time work don't pay the bills, I couldn't embrace the Mr. Mom role as fully as I would if she and I were willingly switching places. We have talked about whether or not that would ever happen; she thinks it's a good idea, when she is able to bring in enough money to support the family, that I would then get a chance to stay home, work part-time (maybe), and go back to school myself if that's what I wanted.

I think I'd like that! My recent stint at home sucked in a lot of ways, but mainly because I didn't want to let my family down, and we didn't have a lot of alternatives. The financial repercussions of this will be hard to overcome, even now that I'm employed again. However, it did give me some more time with the kids, and some time to think about stuff. I was able to support my wife in her school and work efforts when she needed it, and I was able to volunteer for the boys' school a lot more than usual. I coached my older son's soccer team and was able to focus on it a lot more than I would have been able to otherwise. I liked being home, I just didn’t like not having any money!