Category: Childhood

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I think it’s high time I take the bold step and say what needs to be said: Moms are kinda important.

There, America. I said what needed to be said, yet none of you had the courage to.

OK, so we all know moms are of course a big deal. My mother is a wonderful human being and a fantastic mother and is happy to be motherly to this day. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I’m 43, and my mom still worries that I’ve eaten lunch.

I’m also fortunate to be married to a wonderful woman who is also a fantastic mother. (She has made it very clear that lunch is up to me, and if I starve it’s not her fault. Hey, I’m her husband, not her kid.)

My wife and I have always split the duties of parenting, with both of us taking part in all aspects along the way. Well, not ALL aspects. I didn’t have to lug them around inside me for nine months. But don’t blame me for that. I’m not a seahorse, for crying out loud.

But I’ve always been fine with taking part in all of the other parenting parts, be it changing diapers, dinner time, homework, etc. (By the way, when my kids were little I hated when people saw me with my kids and said, “So dad’s babysitting today?” No, Dad is dadding today. Babysitters get paid and leave when the shift is over.)

But try as I might, there are some things that I will never be able to do as well as a mom. And not just the whole having them part. For example:

• Moms are better at dressing kids. If you look at pictures of my kids when they were little, it was easy to tell who dressed them. Snappy little fashionable number that matches? Mom. Overalls? Dad.
• Moms sense danger much better. Part of that reason, of course, is that dads find danger much better, and one of the many reasons moms are a necessity is to stop dads from turning the stairs into a giant slide for cardboard sleds.
• Moms are better at public mishaps. Experience a massive diaper explosion in the middle of the grocery store? Moms sprout nine extra arms and manage to have everything packaged and removed to a restroom in the matter of seconds, whereas dads are more inclined to just wrap everything up in a big bundle, haul it to the car and head home to sort everything out.
• Moms are more sympathetic. And by “more sympathetic” I mean less likely to laugh at something, even if it is really funny, such as a child getting stuck in a plastic basketball hoop or tangled up in a bra that was found in the laundry basket.
• Moms are better at talking about some things with children, especially if those children are teenage daughters. My daughter and I once had this conversation:

                       ME: You know, if you ever need to talk about … anything …
                       HER: Um, yeah…
                       ME: I mean, after you talk to your mom. Or one of your aunts. Or grandmothers.
                       HER: Yeah.
                       ME: Good talk.

• Moms are waaaay more in tune with their kids’ emotions. If a child has had a bad day at school, moms have this freaky sixth sense that targets in on the negative vibe and hyperfocuses in on a solution. Dads are more likely, should they notice, to say to mom, “What’s up with him?”
• Moms are masters of subtle verbal communication. If I called my children by their full name, they would respond the same as any other time. Moms? Again, I’m 43, and if my mom says, “Michael Whitfield…” I am immediately a nine-year-old who knows he has done something wrong.

So, yeah, Moms are awesome. We all know it. To my mom, you’re the best a kid could have asked for. To my wife, you’re the best a dad could have asked for. To my my two mothers-in-law, thanks for being two great bonus moms. I’m a lucky guy, all around, as are my kids. So this Mother’s Day, make the awesome moms in your life feel extra special. They’ve earned it. Show them you just how much you love them. Maybe even let them go first on the stair slide.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

I am not sure how he kept it a secret this long.

Little brothers are notorious for ratting out their big sisters, so imagine my surprise when my son spilled the beans from something his big sister did four years ago.

We were driving in the car talking about the kids staying home by themselves. We’re only going to be gone for a week, and I let them watch “Home Alone” to be prepared so they should be fine.

Ha! A little bad parenting humor there.

We don’t have plans to leave them at home by themselves any time soon. But I was commending him on getting to the point where his mother and I can go out for a dinner without receiving 8 billion text messages in the first 20 minutes.

Parker said that the reason he didn’t like staying home was because of that time “Allie totally freaked me out a couple of years ago.”

Huh? You mean to tell me that an indiscretion, perceived or otherwise, happened and you waited YEARS to tell me? If her music is slightly loud my wife and I are informed in milliseconds.

But somehow, this kept. Possibly because he was afraid of the person who is not Allie.

Confused yet?

Apparently, several years ago, we left them alone and did something crazy like go to the grocery store together. Once we were gone, he said his sister struck a very awkward, stiff pose and began walking toward him slowly, with a weird grin on her face and her head tilted slightly sideways. According to him, they had this conversation:

PARKER: Stop, it, Allie.

ALLIE: Allie’s not here, Parker.

PARKER: STOP IT, ALLIE!!!

ALLIE: Allie’s not here, Parker.

And she continued slowly pacing toward him smiling and saying this until, I am guessing, he threw the nearest object at her.

For whatever reason, he had neglected to tell us about this incident until now. My reaction was to laugh, which I fortunately stifled. “Dude, that is just wrong,” I said.

Fortunately, he is over the freak-out now, and we can all kinda laugh about it.

Now first off, I am not condoning what she did. That said, the part of my brain that is still stuck in college-mode absolutely loved it. That’s how you mess with your little brother.

Also, I am the youngest of four kids, with three older sisters. If they are reading this, I can only guess they are lamenting that they had never thought of this tactic to mess with me as a kid. That said, they found plenty of pretty solid ones on their own without pretending to be possessed. Those include hooking me by my belt loop to a rope swing, spinning me and telling me to close my eyes and count to 10, and when I opened them I would be able to fly. (Hey, guess what happened after 10? I could not fly, and everyone had scattered.) This also includes telling me that when I clipped my nails, I had to bury all of the clippings in different holes in the yard or a witch could find them and cast a spell on me. Our childhood home’s backyard is a graveyard of hundreds of graves of nail clippings from a paranoid little me. Good times!

We were having dinner recently, and I brought up the story. “Hey, Allie. Parker ratted you out on something you did to him a while back…” I told the story and she gave a great big eye roll, which I have found is the most common facial expression for a teenage girl.

“Omigosh, Parker, I was like seven when I did that.” Eye roll. She wasn’t seven, by the way, because that would have put him at four, and we weren’t leaving them home then.

I assured my daughter that the statute of limitations had her protected from any punishment, and we could all enjoy a good laugh about it. Eye roll. And a bit of a laugh.

When siblings look back on their time as kids, you want them to be fond memories. Not the fighting, the squabbling, the generally-being-siblings parts. But it’s OK to have some good memories of the times one of them got the other one, so long as it was fairly innocuous.

This was a pretty harmless prank, as were the ones my sisters did to me. It’s all part of being a little brother. And, when I look at my kids and also think back on my childhood, it’s probably a very legitimate payback for all the things we did as little brothers.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

As a parent, one of my key jobs is to tell my children things that make them roll their eyes.

Among some of the things in the Hall of Fame of Dadisms that my kids absolutely love hearing:

• When they tell me something isn’t fair, I tell them that the world is not fair, and they should be thankful for that, because it’s not fair in their favor.
• When they inform me that they are not interested in performing a task, I tell them that’s perfect because I absolutely wanted to do it for them. I also frequently add that “Enthusiasm is not required.”
• “Spirit vs. letter!” They absolutely love to hear this when they try and get out of things on a technicality, of which my wife and I will have no part. We are a spirit of the law household. Also, a monarchy.

But of late, my most common repeated utterance is one simple word, a word that used to be a fine word. Used to serve a great purpose. It’s even mentioned twice in the title of my favorite NPR show. But, alas, my kids have ruined it for me, primarily because it starts about 80 percent of the sentences that come out of their mouths: “Wait.”

I am not sure when it started. But suddenly one day, I realized both had become beholden to starting sentences with “Wait.” And far too often, said sentence involves stating the obvious. For example, let’s say I’m walking in with a handful of grocery bags.

ME: Hey, can you grab the rest of the groceries from the car?

EITHER CHILD: Wait – did you go to the grocery store?

Or, say we’re getting ready for school in the morning, and I am going to take one of the kids to car line. I grab my keys and head to the front door:

ME: Alright, let’s go.

EITHER CHILD: Wait – you’re taking me to school today?

Once it became clear that they were stuck in this verbal record skip, I decided I would do what dads do best – respond with dad commentary. So, when they say, “Wait – did you go to the grocery store?” I will now respond, “Wait – no. I was at the Houston Astrodome. They were giving away groceries there.” Or when they say, “Wait – you’re taking me to school today?” I will say, “Wait – no. We’re going to the Houston Astrodome. It’s grocery day.”

Now, you may think that I am being petty with them, but I know that my message is getting across. And how do I know this? Because both kids have said, “Dad, stop saying ‘wait’ back to me.” My daughter tried to go down the path of “It’s a word. Get over it.” That resulted in a ridiculously long lecture from me on words and their impact over the course of history. Some of it may have even been true.

I’m really not doing it just to jab at them. That’s just an added bonus. But one of best things a parent can give their child is the gift of effective communication. And if they will take a refined approach to the English language on their journey through life, they will have an advantage. And you never know where that journey may lead you. Could even be to the Houston Astrodome. Wait — for grocery day?

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

My family went to dinner the other night. As we all got of the car, we stood at the back of the vehicle and waited for several cars to pass by until we crossed the parking lot to the restaurant.

As we walked, it occurred to me: Neither my wife nor I had not protected either of our children from wandering in front of the oncoming traffic. We hadn’t held a hand. We hadn’t extended the Uncrossable Parental Hand right in the midsection. We hadn’t even made that attention getting parenting noise you make when halting children. You know, that “Bempbempbemp! Stop!”

And why had we not done any of those things? Because at this point, at 12 and 15, I’m pretty much done parenting. World, they’re all yours.

Ha! Little parenting fun. Of course, I’ll always be parenting. It’s just that now, it gets to be way more hands off, figuratively and literally.

I know lots of people love the time when their kids are babies, but I’ll be honest with you — my kids are way more fun now than when they were little. And you may say, “Mike, your kids are not there for fun.” To which I reply, “Yeah, well, my wife doesn’t really like superhero movies, and I don’t like going to the theater by myself. Check. Mate.”

Babies are fine. Toddlers are fine. Young kids are fine. (OK, correction: Toddlers are terrifying little menaces bent on world destruction and maximum pain infliction, on themselves and others, sometimes by accident but most often by an insane inability to predict effects from their misguided causation. But we can go with them being fine.)

I like that my kids are now making their own decisions and they actually understand the consequences, before and after. I like that they’ll sit down and watch political debates and actually ask questions about what’s going on.  I like that when they tell me they’re hungry, “Well you know where the kitchen is” is a perfectly acceptable answer.

And sure there are pitfalls ahead. There’s driving. Dating. Breakups. But I can deal with those. I think. For one thing, I’ve always found myself to be a pretty reasonable ear to bend in times of crises. Granted, it helps when the person is receptive to fatherly advice, which they definitely weren’t when they were little, because small kids and reason are not allowed in the same room together. Thus, any attempt at explaining a bad situation through logic or analogies would be hopelessly lost. Now, they can at least see the big picture.

When we got into the restaurant, we were talking about how things are different when the kids were little vs. now. Sure, it’s not all better. Hey, parents with little kids! Here’s one fun fact you can look forward to — when they stop ordering from the kids’ menu, your bill goes up fast! Hooray!

But it’s mostly a lot easier. Another example — this was a sushi restaurant. Three of us wanted sushi. One didn’t. There was a time when the lone holdout could make dinner out one of those “Why do we even try?” moments. But now? We can pretty much power through one dissenter. “If you don’t want sushi, find something else on the menu. If you don’t see anything you like, well, I don’t know. Just starve. Or something. But we’re eating sushi. So hush.”

And lest I sound like too much of a crank, it was fun when the kids were little. I had a blast playing with them, teaching them, tending to them, and just trying to be dad. But it’s just better now. For one thing, I can go get sushi and watch a superhero movie. And I’m pretty sure they won’t get hit by cars on the way.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

 

My kids and I have a different philosophy on cleaning the house. My philosophy is that it should be done. Their philosophy is, “Huh? It is clean!”

OK, I know I am making my kids sound like little Veruca Salt monsters. Truth is, they are actually OK on occasion at chipping in and doing their part. It’s just that they see the world differently. I suppose when I was that age, the world I saw as “clean” may very well been a world my parents saw as “teetering on the verge of an anarchistic wasteland.”

My wife and I have tried over the years to implement various chore schedules, and they have usually lasted about four days until they just degrade into the realities of what it’s like trying to keep a house clean with a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old.

If you are one of those houses that is impeccably clean at all times, and your kids are contributing members of said cleaning efforts, good on you. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we are more the norm of most houses.

To give you an idea of some of our differing philosophies, let’s look at a few facets of housekeeping and how we differ on our views:

Dishes:

ME: Once they have run through a cycle in the dishwasher and been put back in the cabinets, the dishes are done.

THEM: I was going to put it in the sink at some point. Maybe.

Clothes:

ME: Folded and put up in dressers.

THEM: We prefer to live life as hobos with clean and dirty clothes mixed in a harmonious pile of chaos that will be a huge help getting ready for school in the morning. Also, matching pairs of socks should never, ever come within four rooms of each other.

Shoes:

ME: Return them every evening to that magical room known as a closet, and you can find them in the morning, right where you left them.

THEM: Let’s leave one shoe in the car and the other in the kitchen cabinet.

Sweeping:

ME: Thoroughly gather all debris of the floor and then sweep into a dustpan. Empty dustpan into the trash.

THEM: What is this sweeping you speak of?

Emptying trash:

ME: Trash is full. Time to take it out.

THEM: Trash is full? Nah, we can put more in it.

Cleaning off the back deck with a leaf blower:

ME: A necessary evil.

THEM: OK, this is fun.

Returning pillows to the couch:

ME: Ah, order has returned.

THEM: But the dogs are napping.

Replacing toilet paper roll:

ME: Well, that would be the decent thing to do.

THEM: Pretty sure we have elves who do that.

Taking personal effects upstairs:

ME: Take it to your room.

THEM: But I was going to use it down here. Besides, don’t our elves take it up for us?

Now, lest you have this idea that our house is some filthy hoarder house, it’s not. It’s a house and a home. A family of four lives here. And thus there is a backpack here, a sock there, an empty Gatorade bottle there. It’s just .. life. And if I really want to get the house to the level of clean that I think is necessary, I guess I just need to accept that they are kinda horrible at it. My wife and I will continue to suck it up and do a little extra on our part, and know that at the end of the day, it’s actually not that much work. Especially when the elves chip in.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

I know that parenting can be hard sometimes. But there are some things that, let’s be honest here, should not be that difficult.

Playing I Spy is definitely one of those.

I witnessed this the other day when I went to pick up lunch for my wife and me. (Quick side diversion: It was cold and rainy, and so a grilled cheese and soup sounded like a good combo. Apparently, that sentiment was felt by roughly everyone else on the planet, which resulted in a long line at the soup place. Two different people in line took turns complaining about how long the line was. Yes, how dare all of these people have the same reaction to cold and rain that you did. Anyways, back to the story.)

As I waited my turn in line, I heard a little girl behind me. “Dad. Let’s play I Spy. Dad. Dad. Daddy. Daaad. Dad. I Spy. Let’s play I Spy.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Dad was not responding. Dad was on his phone. Dude, I’ve been there. Probably in the last 24 hours. I get it. But there are a few things you need to accept in life when you are a parent, and one of those is certainly that you are not only obligated to play I Spy, but to play it correctly.

I considered playing I Spy with her, but then I reminded myself that I am some random dude in a restaurant. Eventually, the dad heard her and he looked up from his phone.

“Yeah, um, fine, I Spy something yellow.”

“Banana,” she said, pointing at the enormous banana picture on the wall, and the only yellow thing in sight.

“I Spy something blue,” he said.

“Ummm.”

“We did it last time we were here,” he said, which we all clearly can see is a violation of internationally agreed upon I Spy protocol.

“Blueberry,” she said, pointing at another painting on the wall.

She decided it was her turn. “I Spy something yellow!” She said proudly.

“Yeah, banana.”

Fortunately the line progressed and it was my turn to order, and I stopped eavesdropping. And I could stop twitching a little bit at the dad’s horrible grasp of how to properly play I Spy with a kid.

As much as I wanted to, I did not do my civic duty and tell the guy how I Spy is supposed to work with little kids. So, in case you are wondering, the rules are:

• When you are the dad, the first color you pick needs to be one of the most common colors that is in your current field of vision. That keeps the kid occupied for a long time. The only way his banana choice was an acceptable option is if there was a painting of multiple bananas, a sun, Spongebob and lemons. That way, you can draw the game out, as it is designed. “Is it a banana?” “No!” “Is it that banana?” “No!” Is it a lemon?” “No!” Is it Spongebob?” “It IS Spongebob.”
• When you are a dad, never guess the right answer first. This is not a race. This is distraction action. If your competitive nature leads you to the point where you need to win quickly, you need to recalibrate your life.
• Never go back to old answers. Kids have amazing memories. And again, the point of I Spy is to kill time. If you picked the blueberry last time, find a different blue. Trust me. There’s something blue. The sky will work.

OK, in fairness, I don’t know that dad was going through. I am sure the dad was plenty harried and was at his wit’s end, as every parent is pretty much all the time. But I just believe that there is a certain baseline of parenting that needs to be adhered to, and that starts with the basics of I Spy. It just makes sense. Kinda like a grill cheese and soup order on a cold and rainy day.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

Most anyone who has been the parent of a small child has experienced this: You are out in public, and you make the mistake of taking your eyes off your child for three-tenths of a second, only to look back and see that your child is nowhere to be seen, at which point your brain says, “Well, I guess this is how you become a made-for-TV movie, so pretty much time to panic.”

It happened to me years ago when my son was about five. I was at the Children’s Museum in Atlanta, and my son pretty much vanished before my eyes. As in any children’s museum, there are eight bajillion places a kid can be, so I didn’t immediately go to panic mode. Of course, I did have one of his grandparents with me, so that certainly put a sense of urgency to locate said grandchild.

Parker had climbed under a table and we found him rather quickly, and thus we were not forced to go to Defcon Level Grandparent.

My kids are older now, and I don’t really need to worry about them wandering off or disappearing. In fact, if I’m at a store with them these days, I’ll often remind them that they are free to go and shop at any other place in the store I am not.

But the other day, I had a flashback to that sense of panic. I was checking out at the grocery store when a woman walked in with a small child, probably two or so. She was old enough to walk fine, but she was still at that age where you know that if you introduce a slight incline, her walk will gradually develop into a run which will without a doubt develop into a roll. Fun fact: Most dads find that roll hilarious when done harmlessly on grass, but never share that with moms.

Fortunately, no incline in the grocery store. But there were cookies. The grocery store keeps a little bin of sugar cookies right by the customer service desk, and clearly the little girl knew there were cookies.

As they entered from the other side of the door, the mother stopped and peered into a shopping cart. It was one of those carts that had a whole bunch of items marked down. As she stopped to consider whether she should get the candy canes for 80 percent off, Cookie Monster took off. She sped up, toddling and wobbling across the grocery store.

The mother looked through the cart for about three seconds, tops. She then looked down to her right. And then to her left. Nothing but grocery store floor. She looked left. Then she looked right, in my direction. I saw the look. Panic. Sheer, abject panic. Her worst fears were coming true. Her baby was … and then she saw me pointing at her daughter. Then she saw the woman in the aisle next to mine pointing. And the older gentleman at customer service. And the grandmother who was blocking the other exit doors with her cart. Don’t worry, mom. The village is here.

The mom nodded a rather embarrassing smile and began a hurried walk/run/shuffle combo over to little Ashley, who now had her cookie. Fortunately, we are not a judgmental village. The grandmother walked past and told the mother what a pretty young girl Ashley was.

The mother smiled and said thank you, taking her daughter’s hand (the one that was cookie-free). The walk back to her starting point was no doubt one of those chats we have all had. “Ashley! You CANNOT walk away from me! You need to stay with Mommy!” And let’s be honest — those conversations are way more for the parent than the child, as more than likely, what Ashley was hearing was, “Eat the cookie” on loop.

So in the end, it was that scary moment for a parent at the time that all of us old seasoned vets knew was no big deal at all. It was just cookie time.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike. Visit his blog at www.mikeslike.us.