Category: Parenting

What Happens When a Child Calls a Parent by their First Name?


calvin
apololgies to Mr. Watterson for the unauthorized use of Calvin.

(Please forgive me for the use of ‘their’ as a neuter third-person singular. I just can’t fight it anymore.)

Referring to  parents by their first names. It always shocked me as a teen when I heard peers do it, and though it turned into more disturbance than shock as I grew older, I have to admit that it still sends me some sort of an unsettling signal when I hear it. I have to wonder: Do they call their parents by their first names when they are talking to them, or just about them?

There was a time when my daughter would do it with me. It was away for her to express anger. I didn’t put up with it. I’d walk away. As far as I was concerned,  it was a conversation ender. She doesn’t do it anymore. However, she does still get angry with me. Go figure.

“They may already know too much about their mother and father–nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I’ve noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents’ faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?”

― Richard Ford, The Sportswriter

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Personal Stuff: Divorce + Fatherhood = The Worst, Most Painful Irony of My Life


I am sure that it is not an uncommon situation that I am in: I have two wonderful children, and an absolutely horrible ex-marriage. If I want to deal with my kids, I have to deal with this mess. Easy choice, but man, sometimes…

I’m not saying that the former wife is a horrible person, that she is x, y, or z (the variables standing for any number of derogatory adjectives or nouns that are used by divorced people all over the world to describe the other cohort in the crime of their coupling). I am willing to assert, though, that she is the ne plus ultra of the, hmmmm, how to put this, the epitome of the difficult former spouse; if in the afterlife she is to be judged by her co-parenting skills, well,  it’s going to be a tough trip through Purgatory.

Nor am I saying that I’m some perfect or even good former spouse and co-parent. I wish I were made of tougher stuff. I wish that I could always do the right thing, that I could let every insult, every attack, every pointless (except for the point of hurting me) act of revenge for G-d knows what misdeed (the misdeed of wanting a divorce?), I wish I could let them all slip by. I have thinner skin than I would like to have. I don’t know how to make it thicker. (Maybe Sean Sphincter and I should attend a class on obtaining some tougher emotional armor.)

Were there no kids? I’d be gone. I’d fly away. I’d head back to Charleston without looking over my shoulder, and there would be no sequel. But there are the children, and they are the greatest thing in the world that has ever happened to me. I feel a glow in their presence. I love doing things for them. Watching them stirs such strong feelings that even when I worry about them, even when I am mad at them, even when they are purposely difficult, there is not a part of me that doesn’t want to protect them, to love them, to make the world a better place for them. I do not know if I would ever have had this depth of feeling for anything were I never to have had children.

I wish more of my time weren’t occupied by the strife. But here I am, slipping down the backslope of my life, having to force myself not to answer hostile texts, steeling myself not to strike back at things perpetrated out of pure vindictiveness, working to keep my mind on other, more pleasant things, and most difficult of all, trying to construct a view of my life that isn’t so filled with this regret at the painful paradox of being a dad thanks to the biggest mistake in my life; all this, in order that I might just let myself be filled with the wonder and the privilege it that it is to be that dad.

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No Wonder tRump’s Grumpy–His Wife Won’t Sleep With him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.


Of the restrictions imposed by being the Most Powerful Man in the World, the inability to move the seat of government may be the most torturous of them all.

Avoiding your vulgar, garish boor of a husband is now the easiest thing in the world for Mrs. Drumpf. All she has to do is stay away from the District of Columbia.

Twitler is taking Propecia. Side effects include:

  • impotence, loss of interest in sex, or trouble having an orgasm;
  • abnormal ejaculation;
  • swelling in your hands or feet;
  • swelling or tenderness in your breasts;
  • dizziness, weakness;
  • feeling like you might pass out;
  • headache;
  • runny nose;

Note the first side effect listed. It may be that that is an advantage if you are the president, your wife can’t stand your flesh, and you wish to avoid scandal. However, a man’s view of himself, especially a puffed-up peacock like tRump, is often inextricably intertwined with his dominant and dominating sexuality. A man that can’t even get it from his “young (relatively), and beautiful, piece of ass”, well, what kind of tough hombre is that?

The third side effect, swelling of the hands? That one Drumpf definitely wants.

melania-gun
“Try  doing to me what you did to Ivana and I will shoot your flabby ass. In Slovenian.”
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Depression in Teenage Girls and Young Women: Is it getting worse?


menace-1-1
From Hyperbole and a Half, a great blog on depression

 

Yes, that does seem to be the case, in spite of increased awareness, better medications, and supposedly less stigma.

This from NPR

This from MarketWatch

And this from the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics

RESULTS: The 12-month prevalence of MDEs increased from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.3% in 2014 in adolescents and from 8.8% to 9.6% in young adults (both P < .001). The increase was larger and statistically significant only in the age range of 12 to 20 years. The trends remained significant after adjustment for substance use disorders and sociodemographic factors. Mental health care contacts overall did not change over time; however, the use of specialty mental health providers increased in adolescents and young adults, and the use of prescription medications and inpatient hospitalizations increased in adolescents.

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More Life Lessons, In Which The Totally Useless Dog Eats My Son’s Chocolate Birthday Cake, and Lives to Annoy Other Day.


I really didn’t want another dog.

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Genius Mutt in a box

Y’know that old joke, the one where various people are having a discussion about when life begins (conception, etc), and the old couple has the punchline about life beginning when the kids move out and the dog dies. At this point in my life I’m still not looking forward to when the kids move out,  nor do I want the current canine to croak, but when my previous dog died, I have to admit that I was in no hurry to get her replaced.

I had had my own dogs since my junior year in college. After around 35 years of owning various hounds, arctic breeds, retriever crosses, herding dogs, my 16 year-old Australian Cattle Dog, Maddie, was euthanized on a 4th of July. This was just slightly less than a month before my best friend died after a bout with a cancer caused by the radiation that had cured his previous cancer around 20 years earlier. When Mike died, we had been friends for nearly 4o years.

It’s not an astounding revelation that you don’t get to go back to sixth grade and make another decades-long best friendship. You’re just stuck with that permanent sense of loss that occurs when you realize nothing can ever be the same again.  I will never have a best friend who was around since I was 10. I suppose that this isn’t astounding. We all know it will happen. Everyone gets to this point, some reach it quite early in life.

Mike had just turned 50, and I was just about to do the same.  Plain and simple, I didn’t want another dog. As a veterinarian, I had usually counseled clients to get back into the saddle (more often than not a new pet helps ease the pain of the loss of the old one), and although I had always followed that advice myself, when my best friend died I decided that I was done. I wasn’t in the mood for any more loss. Life brings enough loss without going out and purposely adding to it.

But Jolee bugged me. And bugged me. And then bugged me some more. And went after this the way that only a child who wants a dog can. Then she started finding dogs on PetFinder.com. She worked on my guilt about the divorce. And then I broke. I should’ve known better. I’m a veterinarian, the guy who is on the other side of the exam table when the exasperated parent–usually a mother–comes in and says, “I told them they could have a dog if they would help take care of him!” To which I usually answer, “And you had what evidence to actually believe this claim?”

The truth is that no matter how much kids promise, they are going to fall short. Usually they are going to fall way short. And then they will probably leave for college before the dog dies, which means you’re stuck with the difficulties of caring for the old dog, with his arthritic joints, incontinent bladder, bad eyesight, and failing cognitive abilities. The kids are alright: they do have good intentions. They just have really poor followthrough combined with an inability to accurately assess their desires and capacities. There are a lot of stories about the strong bond between a child and a dog. But no one writes stories about when a child’s interest in the dog gets hijacked for interest in something else (sports, hormone-induced wackiness, cars, music, delinquent behavior. . .) The problem is that it takes forever to say no, but just a few moments of delusion or weakness to say yes. And in general,  parents love to say yes. 

But I’m digressing. This is about my son’s birthday, my dog Kaleb, who is a total maroon, and the chocolate cake.  Every 16 year-old should have a chocolate cake for breakfast on this momentous occasion. Took it out of the refrigerator, put it on the counter, put the 17 candles on (one for good luck), and went upstairs to brush my teeth. Return downstairs, and Genius Mutt is licking the last bits of crumbs off of the floor.

To be continued. . .

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What I Threw Out Today: The Hotel Brochure from My Trip to Phuket, and what it says about aging


WAS I ALREADY TOO OLD to call it a voyage of my misspent youth? Maybe–we extend youth so long these days, heaven forfend that we get older, IMG_1879because as you age, you disappear. When you age you get to that point where, when contemplating the future, you no longer see the things that once inspired you, but rather the indignities and the infirmities that lie ahead. That is, unless you adopt a healthy attitude towards aging, and I haven’t. I’m in the midlife crisis I’ve been in since I was 25.

What does it say, in any case? It says to me that I went to Thailand with some woman. It says that people drift apart and experiences are the remembrance of emotion, not of images or place. The trip to Thailand was fun, and it wasn’t fun. It was one of those relationships that had just a bit too much competition and a bit too much held inIMG_1883 reserve. It’s all part of the past now, and whatever was good (or bad) about it I will hold in my memory. IMG_1886However, I’m at the point in my life where I’d like to–if I’m able–choose the time and place of my remembering things. I don’t like bad memories slipping in at inconvenient moments. It just muddies my mental waters. If I were a brightsider, I’d say at least I can still remember.

I know it’s only one piece of paper that I am throwing out. But they add up. If I kept it, my children would find it one day (maybe) after I died, and say, oh, so he went to Thailand once. It would not even be a footnote in their memories of me.

On the lighter side, the translations from the Thai are hilarious.
IMG_1880

IMG_1885IMG_1884IMG_1882

If you like this blog, please consider donating to PAZ (Pan American Zoonotic Research and Prevention, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing disease in underserved populations)

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It’s Over: Summer, Our Disappearing Childhoods, and Yes, I’m Feeling Pissed About It


Yup, folks, summer is over. Don’t start giving me your lip about it not being the “official” end of summer,  about it not being Labor Day yet, or the even stupider nonsense about the equinox. The bare naked and ugly truth is that summer is kaput,  morto, D-E-A-D. The kids are back in school, marking the real end to the carefree feeling that accompanies the wonderful warm months. Time is now lunches and buses and report cards and social complexities and teachers of both the competent and incompetent variety,  not to mention that biggest waste of children’s time known as homework. (Of course, every teacher thinks her homework assignments are useful and important, but whatever–I’ll be targeting those maroons shortly. Also, since I’m taking detours, the weather isn’t correlated with arthritis[1,2,3]* and sugar doesn’t make your children hyperactive[4], but I don’t bother arguing these  anymore because, well, because people also vote for Donald Trump and deny global warming and I’ve got other Twinkies to fry.) First idiot that says something saccharine about the changing of the seasons and oh snow so pretty gets salted and sold to cannibals.

This year’s summer was ridiculously short. Embarrassingly short. I felt ashamed telling my kids that they had to go back to school, and no, they were in no mood to start up again with their respective academic purgatories, junior high and high school.  Students in Massachusetts didn’t get out until June 26, which should have been cause for the pillorying of the both the Superintendent and the members of the School Committee, but all we like sheep have gone apathetic, and we’ll probably settle for a week at the fourth of July in a few decades. And students will still get a better education in a dozen other countries.

This used to be called copyright violation, stealing, etc. It is now known as "re-purposing." My apologies to Mr. Groenig.
This used to be called copyright violation, stealing, etc. It is now known as “re-purposing.” My apologies to Mr. Groenig, but not to the editors who have basically given free license to this practice.

 

*The third article is much more interesting and nuanced, and it does correlate physical activity and season, which may be a confounder in these studies.

1.Gorin A, et al;  Rheumatoid arthritis patients show weather sensitivity in daily life, but the relationship is not clinically significant;Pain, Volume 81, Issues 1–2, 1 May 1999, Pages 173–177

2. Dorleijn D, et al; Associations between weather conditions and clinical symptoms in patients with hip osteoarthritis: A 2-year cohort study; Pain, Volume 155, Issue 4, April 2014, Pages 808–813

3. Feinglass J, Lee J, Dunlop D, Song J, Semanik P, Chang RW. The Effects of Daily Weather on Accelerometer-measured Physical Activity among Adults with Arthritis. Journal of physical activity & health. 2011;8(7):934-943.

4. Wolraich ML, Wilson DB, White J. The Effect of Sugar on Behavior or Cognition in Children: A Meta-analysis. JAMA.1995;274(20):1617-1621

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We’re Back


Extra point if you know immediately why this picture is here.
Extra point if you know immediately why this picture is here.

We’re back.

We disappear from time to time.

Personal issues of the staff, like divorce, other jobs, and puppies that refuse to housebreak have been keeping the staff occupied.

For example, one of our most reliable writers sent us this note: “The divorce is final, but the parasite shyster plaintiff’s attorney still wants blood, flesh, and, yes, more filthy lucre.”

Life has been rather tough on the Meta-Bug editorial staff since the last post.

The former spouse of the above-mentioned writer has grown even more hostile since the divorce and the last entry, written nearly a year ago. It’s a mystery to us all.  The vast majority of the staff wants to get on with our normal business, but the man-hours required to devote to the very real problems of their personal lives (we realize our workers actually have lives) have left little time (not to mention funds, for we are self-funded) for our team of crack investigative reporters to go out there and get truly interesting and important stories. It seems that some of our staff is just unlucky (flooded basements). Some are overworked. And for the ones going through divorces, well, seems that some folks just can’t let go. They revel in the fight. To this contributor, it appears like refusing to admit that the plate of elephant manure and crushed-up cockroaches you’re eating isn’t actually worse  than the nice bowl of gelato that’s sitting right next to you: “I really like this,” you say. “Now get that fucking fior di latte and stracciatella out of my face before I really lose it.”

However, we did get an editorial out of all of this:

Divorce should not be in the hands of lawyers and judges.

Divorce should not be in the hands of lawyers and judges.

Divorce should not be in the hands of lawyers and judges.

Some day an enlightened public will have to wrest this from the hands of the divorce attorneys, while they kick and scream and predict the death of society. It probably won’t be the death of society, but it will be the end of the world as we know it, and that is more than fine.

Because we are so nosy, we picked up this piece of writing on a crumpled piece of paper from the courthouse floor:

Today I saw a grown man handcuffed in the courtroom because he was unable to pay his child support. He started to cry, but the judge didn’t really care. If what he says was true, then he was paying all the money he had for child support. So who will benefit from his incarceration? The children? I can’t imagine how. The former wife? Well, I’m sure that going to jail and losing his job will enhance his future earning capacity. She may have a need for vendetta, may feel that he has it coming, but she’s probably acting from her worst self, or her only self if she can’t separate herself from this side of her.  I suppose some smug prigs will be satisfied at seeing this man who has no experience with the criminal justice system tossed into jail, satisfying her worser angels. Bully for her…

I saw another guy at the clerk’s desk, he was showing his pay stubs and how they were less then the weekly amount owed on child support. He was from the former Soviet Union, and seeing the machine just turning and churning, regardless of the circumstances, made him feel like he was in Moscow once again.,,

Do the powers that be really think that children can be isolated from the conflict that an adversarial system encourages? In court I heard a lawyer, tell the judge that charges $460/hour. This same judge didn’t flinch, even though he said something about “reasonable lawyer’s fees.” By what I see, this lawyer has absolutely no control over his client, or perhaps he is even encouraging her to continue litigation in order to pad his own wallet. What’s amazing, truly astounding,  is that he probably thinks he’s actually worth it. He doesn’t seem any brighter than the average bear, and I so far a lot of his strategy seems to be throwing lots of motions and paperwork at the process. The other side complains that much  of it is illegible, which means that they need to call him to fix it, and then the cost of the whole deal goes up, since he’s clearly the type of lawyer who doesn’t let a minute of his day go unbilled. The plaintiff’s lawyer seems to be taking the case personally, as he has developed a rather un-lawyerly tendency to lose his temper when talking about the defendant.  He works for a fancy-schmancy (which is two grades higher than merely “fancy”) law firm. I have heard of it. They have very nice offices with good views, glass conference rooms, stocked with all sorts of things with their logo on it, including the napkins that their clients use to wipe the crumbs from their faces. Do these self-congratulatory surroundings improves their ability to win cases for their clients?

NastTweed

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