You're OK, kid, walk it off

I find it interesting how children interact with their parents.

When my boys were younger, it was clear their mom and I each had particular roles to play.

If they wanted to wrassle, roughhouse, or generally do things of a testosterone nature they came to yours truly.

I can remember one instance when the boys, who were around eight and six at the time, were using me as their personal wrestling dummy.

They would attack in tandem and I would fend off the assaults that came from every direction imaginable.

I stopped the action and asked why they never wrestle their mom this way.

My oldest stopped, looked at me and with all seriousness said, “Because we love mom.”

The younger one agreed and the assault resumed.

It's not that they didn't love me, but they decided it was my role to give them noogies while holding them in a headlock.

It was mom's job to provide a more nurturing role.

As little guys, they determined mom was the giver of affection and dad was the jungle gym, punching bag and wrestling mat.

Their mom also took on the role of academic assistant. When they needed help with their math homework or something of that nature, they ran straight to mom.

This had nothing to do with me being the dad, but everything to do with mom being a lot smarter than I am.

However, when they needed help repairing their bike (later on their cars) they came to me, because while their mom makes me look the intellectual equivalent of a neanderthal with a learning disability, I am fairly handy with tools.

I spent a lot of time fixing my own bikes and cars over the years, so I could apply that knowledge to assisting my spawn.

And while they interact differently us, my wife and I interact with them differently.

Being boys, I expected them to come home with scrapes, bruises and the occasional boo-boo.

If they were walking, talking had all their appendages and assorted body parts, I would generally say “You're OK.”

And they were – aside from a few minor injuries that is.

I witnessed many of my dad friends do the same thing with their kids.

“You're OK, now pick up your spleen and put your bike away.”
Of course, if the injury was more than just a minor boo-boo, I knew exactly what to do.

“Where's your mom!”

Mom would then rush in, assess the situation and apply whatever type of care is needed. From a Bandaid to a hug, mom could cover it all.

It's not that dad's don't care, they just do things a little differently than their female counterpart.
For example, my oldest son loved to climb trees when he was small and the apple tree in front of our home was a perfect place to hone his skills as a monkey.
One day he fell out of the tree, a distance of about two metres. I ran to the window in time to see him get up, dust himself off and give me a big grin.
I made sure he had not hit is head or broken anything before giving my official diagnosis of “You're OK.”
When I told his mom about it a couple hours later, she called him over for an examination that came just short of a full body CT scan.
When she was done, she reached the same conclusion I did, he was OK.
I hate to say I told you so, but...

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh

Kid goo is just plain gross

There are many things about raising children no one tells you before you have kids.
You hear about how cute they are and the funny little things they say and do, but parents rarely tell non-parents about the train wreck raising children can be.
Yes they are cute. Yes they say and do funny little things and I wouldn’t trade being a father for the world, but there are certain aspects of parenting I could do without.
It seems little kids are always emitting some form of liquid, especially when they have a cold.
I first noticed it with my oldest son when he was a baby, and the bigger he got, the more goo he produced.
When he had a cold and crawled across the room, it looked like a giant snail had slinked through my house.
The upside was he was easy to find, just follow the trail of mucus.
The dogs enjoyed it too. There was always something to sniff, lick or roll in.
Junior would come crawling over put his arms in the air and say, “Up daddy, up.”
“No, slimy little dude, no.”
But of course I would pick him up and we would wrestle around for a little while. I would then have to burn the clothes I was wearing because they had been encased with so much kid goo they had become their own life form.
Because this was our first child, I was mildly horrified at the excretions coming out of such a cute little person.
OK, perhaps mildly is too gentle a word.
There were some diapers I had to beat with a stick to get into the trash can. The government was investigating my garbage bags for bio-chemical warfare agents.
Good thing George Dubya wasn’t around at the time, or marines would have landed in my driveway looking for WMDs, which in this case was Wicked Messy Diapers.
It was a good day when it came time for potty training.
Dr. James Dobson says it is important to make a big deal out of it when Junior goes on the potty.
So my wife and I would whoop and holler and dance around like drunken lunatics whenever Junior “made a stinky on the potty.”
He would laugh and feel quite proud of himself.
He was also encouraging to others. Like the time at a restaurant when he accompanied me to the washroom and let out a victory cry of, “Yay, daddy went pee in the potty.”
It is amazing how far a little kid’s voice can carry.
Just as Junior was starting to figure out the whole potty thing, we had another son and it was back to diapers, bio-chemical agents and other nasty stuff you usually see only in horror movies like The Blob.
But he too mastered the art of using the lavatory and there was much rejoicing in the House of Handschuh.
But we were not done yet. We had one more bundle of joy to get through the diaper stage. Fortunately the third and final instalment of our clan learned quickly and we were once again free of diaper changes.
But we were not free of cleaning up, not by a long shot.
One of the happiest days of my life was when the last of my children learned how to barf in a bucket.
One thing I have learned as a parent is how not to be grossed out (to a degree anyway.) It is still disgusting, but you build up a sort of immunity to it. The mind is an amazing thing that has the ability to block stuff out, which is a very good thing.
Many was the night when a kid would blow chunks in bed, on the stairs, in the hallway on route to the bathroom and once even on the dog.
The hound didn’t seem to mind or need any help getting cleaned up because by the time I got around to wiping the mutt down, the job had already been taken care of.
Dogs seemed to have mastered not getting grossed out. In fact, when it comes to the family hound the rule of thumb seems to be the grosser the better.
Man’s best friend is truly a disgusting creature.
But being grossed out is only a minor burden to bear for the rewards of being a dad.
And for all you non-parents out there, I would just like to say having kids is a wonderful experience. It truly is.
So go ahead and have children, lots and lots of them. They say and do the cutest things.

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh

My kids aren't perfect, but close enough

Parenting is not for the weak minded.

Or for those with a weak stomach now that I think about it.

How a baby can get that much goo into a single diaper I still do not know.

I speak of the joys of parenting from a place of wisdom and experience.

Despite protests from many of my so-called friends, I reproduced three times. I have brought three children into the world.

Well, technically my wife did all the work, what with carrying them around for nine months and doing stuff like creating lungs and a heart and what not.

But I did my role to make a baby possible and once the kids were born I stepped in as often as I could – well, more or less anyway.

Raising children can be a challenge at the best of times. It is a fine balancing act between heaping on too much discipline and restricting too much of their freedom and letting them run wild and watch them make the top of the news feed.

Children are always pushing the boundaries of their confinements.

When they are little, their goal is to escape from the crib, then they want to escape from their room and as they get older they want to escape from the home they perceive as a concentration camp and run through the streets like a bunch of barbarians only with more of an attitude problem.

When they are in school they want to test the boundaries of just how far they can push the teacher before that vein in her head starts to throb like an alien trying to crawl out of her cranium.

Some children push those boundaries a lot farther than others and I am happy to say my wife and I were never, er, rarely, called in to talk to the principal about the actions of our children.

I am not saying we had perfect little angels (like my parents did), but overall they are pretty darn good kids.

Sure they did stupid kid stuff like setting the kitchen on fire while cooking or accidentally shooting out the window in my garage with a BB gun, but that is more youthful inexperience that adolescent malice.

I can honestly say I never set the kitchen on fire while cooking some hamburgers when I was a kid. Sure, I set half a mountain on fire while playing with some matches with my best friend, but at least our kitchen was fine.

Anyway, I knew going into it that my children would do some dumb stuff either because of inexperience or youthful bravado – of which I can claim incidents in both categories.

Kids are kids, but there is a big difference between youthful exuberance and being a little degenerate.

Youthful exuberance is seeing how far you can jump your peddle bike,

Being a degenerate in training is throwing a rock at your friend while he is seeing how far he can jump on his peddle bike – which results in you crashing and immediately looking for a better class of friend.

I noticed the bratty kids of my youth mostly grew up to be trouble makers in their teen years.

Drugs, alcohol and a general bad attitude accompanied them where ever they went and they soon had a reputation that also went where ever they did.

While I was hardly a perfect little saint spreading goodwill to my fellow man in the teen years, I was also not a really bad kid. No drugs, no alcohol and no harmful acts, just youthful stuff like speeding in my car, sneaking my girlfriend out the side door 2 a.m. and other stuff that was relatively harmless.

As far as I know, my own children are walking a similar path. Are they little angels? Nope, but neither are they the 'bad kids' other kids try to avoid, and that is close enough for me.

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh

Life lessons for my fellow husbands

One day, when my children were little, they wanted to do something they were not allowed to do and I informed them of this.
“But why can't we? Why? Why? Why?”
OK, now husbands please pay attention to this next bit, because the answer I gave is so far from the correct answer it is not even on the same continent.
With my young children questioning why a certain rule is in place, I responded, “Look, I don't make the rules around here, alright. Your mom does.”
Warning! Warning! You have just foolishly stepped into the how-to-make-your-wife-madder-than-a-fat-guy-at-a-salad-bar zone.
Upon hearing my answer - which was said before I really thought about it - the Missus turned an interesting shade of red. The vein in her forehead was not only pulsing, it was taking on Incredible Hulk-like proportions.
For a brief moment I was mesmerized by what was happening, but that fascination quickly turned to a sense of 'I think I just screwed up.'
I was right, I did screw up.
I knew I had made a mistake of epic proportions and quickly filed the information under the don't-ever-do-that-again category ñ with a big read sticker on it, flashing lights and siren should those words ever attempt to escape from my vocal chords again.
I have been known to be a little on the sarcastic, smart ass side of life and this is one of those times it did not bode well for me.
It was an attempt at humour, but it was an attempt that failed, resulting in a closed-door 'discussion' with my better half.
The Missus was not impressed that I would make her the bad guy, er, gal, and blame her for being such a stick in the mud and creating all those rules that were repressing our little ones.
She failed to see the humour for some reason. Needless to say, the Missus was not too thrilled with the man she chose to be her lawfully wedded spouse until death do us part.
And if looks could kill, the parting would have happened and the young 'uns would likely have a new daddy right now because the original daddy didn't know when to shut the hell up.
You see, kids will believe pretty much everything you tell them - when they are young anyway - so the Missus did not want the wee ones blaming her for all the silly rules in our home, like brush your teeth before going to bed, no chocolate before breakfast or no setting things on fire.
It is very important for a parental unit to be united when it comes to setting rules and enforcing those rules and apparently I broke that iron-clad bond when I blamed mom for all those rules I was talking about.
“Parenting is a partnership. We are in this together. We must be united, and if you say that again you will find out how comfortable it is to sleep in the shed in January,” was sort of how my wife explained the situation.
Of course, when children reach the teen years it does not matter what I tell them because they know everything there has ever been, or ever will be, worth knowing.
When the children are young, parents must be united on matters of discipline so the children grow into fine adults. When they are teens, parents my be united as a survival tactic more than anything else.
United we stand, divided we end up debating our teens about why they cannot leave their room in a state that most civilized nations would declare a disaster zone.

Copyright 2015, Darren Handschuh

So long Junior, I will miss you. Who knew?

So my oldest child has flown the coop.

While hardly a kid anymore – he is 22 years old after all – he will always be a child because I was there when he was barely old enough to lay in a crib and wiggle.

I know many people who watched as their children spread their wings and took off, but to be perfectly honest, at the time, I really didn't understand what the big deal was.

I moved out when I was a young man, just like billions of other young people have done throughout the course of time.

As the papa bear, it was my job to raise my children to the point where they are able to move out on their own, then it was “Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out.”

I know a papa bear might not be the best example of parenting in the wild because an adult male bear will attack any other male bear that comes in his territory, even his own child.

But considering male lions eat their young, I think I will with the bruin analogy.

I have never attacked my kids, nor threatened to eat them, so I guess I am doing OK.

Anyway, Junior reached an age where he wanted to take off on his own, to explore new worlds, to live in a different city than the one he was raised.

It was a day I had been thinking about for years, but when the day came I was not doing cartwheels across the lawn – mainly because I am way to old to be doing cartwheels across the lawn - but also because I was not that thrilled with Junior jumping from the nest.

What? What is this? What is this odd feeling I have? I did my job, I raised him as best I could and now I should be able to sit back, wave goodbye and get on with getting the other two out of the house.

But instead of seeing a young man spreading his wings, all I could see was the little boy who held so many grasshoppers in one hand their guts were squishing between his fingers.

Suddenly, the big, tough papa bear was feeling more like a hormonal tween.

During the eight-hour drive to his new city – I helped him move like any papa bear would – all I could think of was the days gone by and the moments a father shares with his young son.

Was I sad Junior was all grown up, something I had worked hard to help make happen?

I surprised even myself because I was.

That can't be right. I'm the big tough papa bear. It was the mama bear who was supposed to be sad little bear is leaving the clan. Papa bear is the one who was supposed to hold the door as Junior made an exit before doing a little dance because it was one down and two to go.

But there I was, the big tough papa bear feeling very melancholy about Junior leaving the cave.

I know it is how life works: you are born, you are a baby, then a kid, then a teen, then a young man and then you move out.

I was ready for it, prepared for it, at times I was almost longing for it so imagine my surprise when I was saddened by it.

With Junior gone there would be things like left overs in the fridge, gas in my car and finally a spare room where I could put my treadmill – yes I actually use the treadmill for more than collecting dust.

Hmm, perhaps there is some good to Junior flying the coop and striking out on his own. I just wonder if his flight will imitate that of a homing pigeon.

I guess we will have to wait and see.

Copyright 2015, Darren Handschuh