Inner Tube

Parenthood: Week 112 – Easier With Age?

“Parenting gets easier as kids get older, right?”

Hope is important in parenting. It’s what gets us through the tough moments, the sleepless nights and the feeling of “I have no idea what I’m doing.” In the past two years I have found myself seeking reassurance from parents of older children that things do in fact get easier. The crazy thing now is that I’m finding parents of kids younger than Ollie looking to me for this affirmation. For so long, Ollie seemed like one of the younger souls on this planet and now there are all these babies younger than him. This is something my mind still has trouble grasping.

When you have an infant, you get this reassurance all of the time. People tell you how your baby will learn to sleep, will be easier to understand and will in general, be easier to parent. Than as toddlerhood appears over the horizon, the portrayal of the your future as a parent becomes ominous with sayings like “the terrible 2’s.”

First off I completely reject the notion that an age or stage of life, infant, two years olds or teenage years should be generalized as being a “good” or “bad” age. This sets our expectations in an negative way and closes us off to the full potential of children of these ages. Teenagers know how much people talk down kids their age and it can’t possibly have a positive effect when people in our culture associate the age of two years old with the word “terrible.”

Back to the main point . . .

While I understand and appreciate the idea of parenting becoming easier, the notion itself is flawed. All parents have different ages that they really click with. Some parents really love the teenage years, while others flourish in the toddler times. It’s not that these parents aren’t great parents in these other years; it’s just that something about that age really clicks with a parent’s style.

Including the factor of “life itself” parenting isn’t a direct trajectory. It goes in waves. With each new stage, there are new things to learn. While the day to day care of Ollie hasn’t necessarily gotten easier, it’s easier to deal with each new stage because you know in the back of my mind that I handled these changes in the past and mastered the new challenges.

The act of parenting doesn’t become easier with time but taking on role of being a parent does. It never stops being a roller coaster but eventually, you learn how to brace yourself for the turns and the loops, and enjoy the ride.

Frat Boy: Gracie - The Gala Part 1

Stunning.

This wasn’t any ordinary Formal, this was a Gala. This was a celebration of our SAI chapter as the oldest running chapter in existence. We were at The Drake Hotel, one of Chicago’s most beloved landmarks on the North section of the Magnificent Mile.

I was graduated at this point from my undergrad but continued at Northwestern for my graduate studies. Diana, my girlfriend (and my future wife) is two years younger than me, so she was still an active undergrad member of SAI.

Most people finish their time as an officer of PMA or SAI at the end of winter quarter and only have the spring to deal with watching younger people take over and than they leave. This is a difficult transition because for years you work at making an organization better and then you pass on these jobs to younger members.

No one is really in office for more than two or three years so sometimes the institutional memory doesn’t get passed on and young officers. This is a very inefficient way to run an organization if constant growth was a goal. However, the goal of PMA and SAI wasn’t for the organization to be in a constant upwards trajectory. Instead these organizations existed to help people bond and learn how to run an organization. The rotating officers, and having older people let go, was a great way to accomplish this task.

I did let go, but I was still a presence. I came to PMA and SAI events and I was often asked for my help and advice when dealing with issues. It was hard after being the music director watching the new music director try to figure out the gig, but it was okay and anyways, I had other priorities.

As this big SAI Gala started to come to together, the girls in SAI asked if the PMA guys would sing at this event. This was unusual as the PMA would usually only sing at their Formal and SAI would sing at their own. However, this was a special event and SAI extended the invitation. The current music director didn’t get invited to the SAI Gala, so I was asked to conduct the PMA as they sang a couple songs, and I happily agreed to help out.

The Gala was huge. Usually only undergrads showed up to Formals, but many SAI alumni showed up. There were much older people who had graduated before I was born who came and then there were those SAI members who took care of me when I was a freshmen, since graduated, who came back for the celebration.

It was such a great feeling to see all of these people again, introduce them to Diana and show tell them about how I had “grown up.” I remember seeing Gracie walk in. It had been more than two years since she graduated and we last talked. During that time, my resentment towards her had built. Not because of anything she had done during this time but because of how I felt that I had been mislead by her.

Gracie had her way of doing things, and her view on the way that SAI and PMA should run. I found that many of her opinions didn’t hold true now that my class was in power. For some reason this felt like a power grab and a way for her to manipulate me. Of course, this is silly. She had graduated and of course her views would be different than mine. As much as our organizations stayed the same, they also changed a lot. My negative feelings towards her, were more about my own insecurities and my inability to let go, more than it was about any bad things she really did to me.

When I saw her, I made every effort to avoid her (I know, reeeeal mature). This wasn’t really difficult since we had different crowds that we hung out with at this event. So everything went really smoothly.

I was so excited as I tried to settle down the PMA guys to sing. I gave them the pitch of our first song and we joined together in song. As we sang, I felt the positive energy coming from the guys and the girls behind me cheering us on. It had been almost a year since I last conducted these guys and it was a great feeling performing with them once again.

After the set, I left the ballroom to go to the bathroom, still feeling the adrenaline high from the performance. As I walked down the hall back to the ballroom, Jessica came running up to me. She was distressed and out of breath.  Jessica told me about what had happened in detail while I was gone, but all I heard was “Gracie,” “Diana,” and “fight.” The positive adrenaline and energy in my body, immediately turned into anger and without responding to Jessica, I pushed into ballroom.

Parenthood: Week 111 – Screen Time

The first time Ollie had screen time was when he was six days old. We settled down to watch The Expendables.  He slept through the entire film but it was some high quality daddy-son screen time.


There’s a lot of concern about the amount of “screen time” our children are getting. The pervasiveness of smart phone has made access to screen time omnipresent. There’s articles linking screen time to all kinds of disorders and dysfunctions, which have made some parents illogically concerned about screen time while other parents don’t seem to notice at all that letting their kid stare at a screen for most of that kid’s waking hours is a bad idea.

I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist. Nothing I’m saying here is based on any research. Like most things on this blog, my thoughts on screen time and children are based on my experiences.

Screen time has been a very important way for my family to acquire cultural knowledge. Like I discussed in this blog post about Bill Cosby, television helped my parents learn and understand what it meant to be American. Television and film opened the world to me and helped me become a more empathetic and understanding human being while video games helped create some of my favorite memories with my brother.

I agree that we need monitor much screen time our children have, but cutting out screen time or setting time limits doesn’t really address this issue. First off, as we’ve seen in the realm of sex education, abstinence education doesn’t work. Teaching our children to abstain from sex, alcohol, fatty foods, video games, and television and internet creates narrow-minded individuals who don’t have the tools to control life’s pleasures and interact with society.

Yes, it’s easier to simply cut things out of your children’s lives but that doesn’t mean that it’s better. I hate it when Ollie has meltdowns when we turn off the television, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up helping him learn how to watch television in appropriate doses. It is essential that we help our children learn to moderate the pleasures in their lives.

Not all screen time is created equal. Watching Sesame Street with your child and encouraging your kid to answer the questions asked by the characters is very different than sitting you kid in front of a show, not meant for their age and leaving them alone. I would rather watch an hour of an appropriate show with Ollie than let him zone out for 15 minutes watching a show like South Park (I love South Park btw, I just don’t think it’s right for Ollie).

As a parent, I am so grateful for the pervasiveness of screen time. Have you ever had to go to the bathroom when you are alone with a child and needed to use a grocery store bathroom? If it wasn’t for Elmo on youtube, I have no idea how I would have got Ollie to stand in that bathroom while I did my business.  Plane rides without iPhones would make a difficult experience with Ollie, excruciating. Besides these more difficult situations, I’ve had a lot of joyous moments watching television with Ollie.

I can’t describe how wonderful it feels to watch reruns of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and have him hear the same message of emotional acceptance and the importance of loving yourself that I did as a child. Hearing him giggle uncontrollably when watching monkeys on Planet Earth was adorable (they don’t want to get their paws wet, sooo cute).



Also, there's Peter, Paul and Mary concert footage with Ollie that I remember watching with my brother. There’s also seeing pictures of his family on the iPad and regular FaceTime conversations with his Popo (my mom), which are highlights of our day whenever they occur. Screen time has not only relieved stress as a parent but has helped Ollie connect with the world around him and his family.

Don’t get me wrong, Diana and I are very conscientious about the amount of screen time and we are not going to let Ollie become a zombie. However, it’s important that acknowledge screen time and all the technology that it includes for how it can enrich our children’s lives.

The screen time thing is really tough to manage.  Right now, Ollie is off of anything that has Elmo.  For some reason when Elmo gets turned off, he melts down worse than when he's watching something else.  I know I will battle Ollie with screen time, and I'm not looking forward to those fights but they are going to be worth it in the long run.

We as a society will continue to struggle manage the way screen time impacts our lives.  The negative consequences of our failure, allowing screen time to cut us off from each other is looming but the way technology can bring us together and make our face to face interactions more meaningful is a possibility that our children deserve.

Frat Boy: Formal

In high school, except for one exception, I didn’t really like dances, but in college I loved formal dances, which we simply called Formals.

If you want to read about me learning to love dancing in college check out this post.  This story also has a related this related link to a story about a how, a current New Yorker editor helped me learn to embrace what I loved about music and myself. 

In high school, dances consisted of making dinner reservations at some fancy restaurant, somehow making our way to the school, taking a picture, awkwardly standing around for a dance or two and then sometimes going to an after-party. When you were an underclassmen, transportation consisted of parents or older siblings.  When you were older you could drive or because of peer pressure you rented a limo.

I didn’t like dancing and the effort put into being seen and doing things a certain way felt disingenuous and kind of silly.

After the ladies of SAI taught me how to dance and the gentlemen of PMA helped me embrace the fun and silliness of dance parties, I looked forward to any opportunity to dance. It was liberating, fun and one of the best ways to relieve the stress of academics.  In my group of friends there was nothing sketchy about what we were doing on the dance floor and anything that seemed to approach more risqué dancing moves were more silly than sexual.

My frat had a Formal every spring. Our Formals looked like this. We walk over and get our dates (most of which were in SAI) and present a bouquet of flowers (not a corsage).  We would make our way to PMA and all pile into a rented school bus. The bus would take us to some kind of banquet hall in a hotel. Everyone would eat dinner in the room, like in a wedding reception. And after dinner we would dance. Then the formal would end, we would all climb into the school bus, which would drive us back to the frat house.

The guys would suit up and the girls would were nice dresses. However, unlike in high school the girls wouldn’t buy a new dress for each formal. More often than not they would reuse a dress or trade dresses with their sorority sisters for variety.

The school bus seemed weird at first but it was actually a really nice way for us to have some fun on the way to the location and take away the issue of driving. We’d hire a DJ and photographer. There would usually be a cash bar, and the food varied in quality depending on the location. A nice view was a plus, but in general, no one really cared. We just wanted an excuse to dress and get down with our “family.”

That was the main reason that these Formals were so much fun. It really felt like a family event. Most of the people who came were people from marching band, SAI and PMA. These were people we lived with, ate our meals with in Saga and defined the community that made our social group feel like a family.

At Formals we had our traditions. Being a music fraternity we had a way of singing grace and performing as a men’s choir toward the end of the night, which was a highlight for everyone involved. SAI had their formal within a couple weeks of ours and that was also a really fun event that had a similar format and vibe. I loved those events as well.

Formals are really a unique event. Getting together with a large group of friends for the purpose of being together and dancing just doesn’t happen in adulthood past college. The only thing that approaches Formals is wedding receptions. I’ve been to some really fun ones that are really meaningful but they are different. It’s just a different energy with multiple generations and the focus on one couple celebrating their union.

This lack of a focus on celebrating a specific event but rather purely celebrating life is what made these events so wonderful. Formals taught me that its worth putting in time and energy simply for the sake of getting friends together to have a good time. You don’t need a major life event to party; you just need good friends. Th Formals were a reminder of this fact and its something I forget when I feel too tired to call up friends or feel like I need an excuse to have fun.

A Formal may seem like just a bunch of college kids getting their party on, but it's so much more.  It's the feeling of losing yourself in dance, surrounded by friends, feeling no embarrassment, only freedom.  It's a feeling of energy, of love and of life.  It is the expression of the human spirit and most importantly a damn good time.  

Sharing Ollie's New Couch

Parenthood: Week 110 – Ollie Do It

One of the proudest moments I’ve had as a parent was about two months ago, when I was showing Ollie how to open a water bottle. Instead of taking my help, he pushed my hand away and insisted “Ollie do it.”

Since then, “Ollie do it,” has become a common phrase in our household. Sometimes it’s from Ollie telling Diana and me that he wants to figure out something by himself. Other times it’s Diana and I reminding Ollie that he can do something with out her helping. The best is after Ollie accomplishes something like putting together a puzzle and proudly exclaiming “Ollie do it!”

As parents, it’s wonderful to feel needed. This unique sense of responsibility and the knowledge that your child wants you to comfort her more than anyone else in the world is really special.  However it’s important that we help instill a sense of independence and the sense of pride that only comes from doing something without assistance.

We aren’t tough parents when it comes to pushing Ollie to gain independence. We didn’t push Ollie to learn how to walk.  There’s really been no “tough love,” that I can remember with Ollie. Teaching children to be independent isn’t about being demonstrative or creating traumatic situations for children to struggle through.

Helping our kids become more independent is about teaching through small playful tasks. Teaching Ollie how to undress and dress himself has been a lot of fun. It started with him helping me take off my shirt. Then I showed him where to put his hands and how to maneuver his arms. He doesn’t get it all of the time, but when he does he’s really proud of himself.

We show Ollie how to clean things up around the house.  He’s not really good at it, but he tries and enjoys the activity. That’s something that you need to keep in mind with toddlers. When we teach them these tasks, we need to accept that fact that by our standards, they are doing a really poor job. But that’s okay, because when Ollie sweeps the floor, it’s not about cleaning the floor but rather Ollie learning how to contribute to the family household and becoming more independent.

At times “Ollie do it,” can become a cry of annoyance when Ollie refuses help for something he’s not able to do (mostly because of safety reasons). This kind of "independence" can be difficult to deal with but it pales to the joy that comes from the growing number of things that Ollie can do without our assistance.

As parents we want to be loved by our children.  Some parents think that if they remain needed by their children and don't teach them how to be independent, then their kids will always be around, and that  may feel like love.  However, if we teach our kids to be their own people, they will come back to us not to ask us to do things for them but rather to share in the joys of life.  Their love will be based on the pride we have given them, not the things we do for them.

As Ollie learns how to do for himself, we learn how to do for Ollie, helping him to be his own person and face the world with us, not because he needs our help but rather because he wants to share the joys of future adventures.