Introduction for Dads

I have chosen to write two introductions to this blog because there are two distinct audiences. Although this introductory section is aimed at fathers, I invite you to read the corresponding section for mothers - after all, you know that your wife is reading this section as well. Emotionally, many people would argue that men are more easily understood than women. There are a few very simple desires that motivate us. Without delving into academic research, I would suspect that most male readers of this book would be happy with three outcomes – beyond the truly important aspects of life (health, family and spirituality). First, we like money. Not that all of us are Gordon Gecko wannabes, but we like our toys and we prefer not to have financial stress. Whether we harbor ambitious career goals or are happy with continuous, modest progress, we are happier with a view more dollars than with less and prefer the additional options afforded by those extra funds. Second, most men would like some amount of time to spend with their male friends. The female response to this, whether we wish to golf, hunt, fish, watch sports, work on cars, or anything else, is that this time is unproductive and primarily spent conversing about insignificant events, drinking beer, using four letter words and producing bodily noises. If you remove the word “unproductive", this assessment is often accurate. For any relationship to work, the parties must respect each other. The male human animal by its nature he has many impulses that do not lend themselves to respect in mixed company. Speaking for myself, I truly enjoy playing golf. Because I have precious little time for golf, I play the game very poorly. That said, I truly enjoy the opportunity to toss modestly clever barbs at my playing partners when they hit a poor shot, and they enjoy the same liberty at my expense. Would I consider taking these same liberties if golfing with my wife? No. Would I ever suggest a career in school lunch preparation for her if a dinner turned out to be a disaster? Never. Time spent with male friends allows men to indulge in low stakes competition in ways that we would not try at home for fear of being disrespectful of our wives and setting a poor example for our children. “Guy time” may be characterized as immature, but it is a fun and productive as an outlet for healthy release of tension. Finally, we all seek to increase the level and frequency of intimacy that we experience with our wives. Like hunger and thirst, the desire for sex was programmed in us as the sole means of propagating our species. The fact that we share a home with a woman that we consider very desirable only serves to increase his desire. Of course, a stay-at-home mom who has spent the entire day changing diapers, nursing, cleaning up messes, and attending to a small crying being who is incapable of expressing their needs verbally is much less likely to be interested in sex than would a date who has ingested three margaritas. There is no magic formula to performing well at work and increasing your pay while spending 10 hours per week with your buddies and being intimate with your wife twice a week. If I were in possession of such a formula, I would purchase hours of advertising during every major sporting event, and you would be willing to pay handsomely for it. The best that we can do is to listen to common complaints and requests from our wives and do our best to address those situations in a manner that becomes second nature. By turning these requests into habits, we do them automatically. Most of the issues presented in this book are situations that can be made substantially easier with a few moments of effort at a time. You may get nothing more than a thank you for remembering to bring an arm full of diapers to the downstairs changing area on a Saturday afternoon. However, after she goes to that area four or five times knowing that there are very few diapers or wipes only to find that the items have been replenished, there will likely be a grateful reaction that makes those few discrete moments of action more than worth the effort. This book was written so that it can be digested in small chunks. The idea of investing two hours to read a parenting book seems a lot less than exciting when the majority of our time away from work is spent parenting. In addition, reading a book from cover to cover generally leaves us with memory of the overall point of the book and a handful of specific data points. My recommendation is to visit this site occasionally as it can be picked up and read for three to five minutes at a time. I suspect that most guys know where the optimal venue for three minutes of reading might be. By reading one or two sections at a time you will remember those 500 or 1000 words well enough to take a few minutes of action shortly thereafter. If you repeat those few minutes for a few days, they become habit. From there, you begin to make her life easier in what seems like small doses, but what is in fact much more significant in the time and energy that is saved. The time spent grabbing 15 diapers from the baby’s room after changing out of your work clothes and dropping them off in the kitchen may take a total of 45 seconds from your day. The time and energy required to get those diapers when returning from shopping with a hungry baby who has recently soiled himself may take 3 times as long, and it may seem like 10 minutes if the child is crying. For many of us, work is not fun. The good news is that for 14 hours each day we are generally out of the reach of those who make it so. When her full-time job is to attend to someone whom she loves but who has no conception of the strain that they are placing upon her, the task can be overwhelming. Doing your best to offer your wife breaks from this job is not only something she needs, but can be a source of helping you meet your own needs by improving her state of mind. Eventually, your child will be able to entertain herself for some period of time, will be able to express her needs to you, and will develop the ability to make choices that allow you to focus on more than watching over them 24 hours a day. Infancy and the toddler years can seem eternal. The good news is that your child will continue to grow and evolve into a "little adult" in what will have seemed like an instant. When that occurs, you will notice that you are beginning to regain the sense of self that you possessed prior to parenthood, that your wife is doing the same, and that life as you knew it was not lost - just put on hold. For now, focus on today and before long you will wonder how that tiny crying baby became that beautiful, intelligent, affectionate five-year-old. I hope that reading this book can take away some of the angst of being the husband of a stay-at-home mother. Oh yes, and consider turning on the fan while you are in here.

Introduction for Moms

Introduction for Moms Comedian Ralphie May has said that “there is nothing that women hate more than seeing a man doing nothing”. My own experience confirms that this is true for my wife, so it is probably a fairly widespread phenomenon. I wrote this book for men to read, but I created it with the idea of pitching it to women. Why, you ask? Because men and women are wired differently. Men digest information differently than women. Because I am not an expert in cognitive psychology, I won’t try and explain the differences. I can, however, speak from experience and tell you that most men like information that is easily digestible, quick to the point, and proximate to the time of need. We want information when we need it, as much as we need, and nothing more. If you want an example, think of your last marital conversation. Odds are, your husband didn’t want to go into the same amount of detail that you did, and you felt as though he was glossing over important aspects of your needs or feelings. The truth is that he wasn’t disinterested. He just wanted to know what you wanted him to do differently. Just knowing that it is important to you that the tape goes in front of the stapler in the stationary drawer is enough. By telling him directly that it matters to you, you have given the situation a degree of importance. In doing so, you have made him care. By explaining all of the bad things that can happen when you spend extra time looking for the tape, you have obscured the point. Its not that he doesn’t care about those bad things. The point is that he cares about you, and the rest is window dressing. You probably know what motivates your husband. First, there are the big things like a roof over your head, food on the table, his family, and health. Beyond that, men like to have a little money to spend on themselves, some time with friends, and a healthy sex life. You may also feel as though those three things occupy too much of his attention relative to other concerns. While this may seem true, it usually isn’t. The fact is that the bigger issues in life such as financial viability, health, and the needs of the house and family will always find him. He doesn’t need to go looking for broken faucets, credit card bills, or crying babies. They find him. On the contrary, if he doesn’t attempt to see his friends or try and get some “quality time” with you, those things probably won’t happen. In short, your husband cares about you, your home, and your baby – a lot. He cares about other things too, just as you do. He gets the big things. He wouldn’t forget to feed your baby. He tends to fumble on the little things. He does so for two key reasons. First, there is no easily accessible list of “little things”. You may remind him that he has put the baby’s clothes in the wrong drawer, but if you remind him in the car on the way to church, it doesn’t stick. He needs to gather and process this information at a time that makes it memorable – either at the moment he is doing something, or when there is no mental clutter like looking for a parking spot. Second, he needs to hear about these specific things as specific things. He doesn’t need a soliloquy on closet organization. He needs to hear that the baby’s closet is organized in a specific way – regardless of why that is. The idea of this book is to give him a list of “little things” that he can do to make the house, and your life, more manageable. He needs to hear or read them in quick chunks, practice them a few times and then begin to do them without thinking about them. By offering a number of ideas, and presenting them as he can best process them, I am hoping to make him more effective in helping you. He cares about you a lot more than he does about me, but I speak his language. I think like he does. My wife has told me the same things that you tell him. Over time I learned to be a more effective partner, both because I love my wife and kids and because until I did so, my chance to pursue my own interests and her affection was not going to come about. I invite you to review the various entries in this blog. Rather than overtly call his attention to them, lead him to those that matter most to you. Tell him that you found this blog. Tell him that you have sent him a link at a time that is convenient or relevant. Point out a post that speaks to things that you would love to see him improve on, and see what happens. By making the information accessible and quickly read, he can develop a few habits that make your life easier. Make sure to show him that you appreciate it when he magically fills the diaper station without being asked. He will do the rest.

Getting Started

The idea for this blog was born years ago when my second child was a newborn. After years of telling myself that I would start on this project, the chaos and 24 hour attention required to raise children and finally transitioned into a more manageable routine. After all, one of the key ideas behind this book was to assist new parents in finding a way to convert udder pandemonium into something resembling a routine, finding more time for fathers and mothers to regain their passion for life beyond parenting, and rekindling the feelings that brought children into their home to begin with. As I began to write this as a book (literally, the first sentence) I heard a noise from upstairs. As fate would have it, my then six-year-old daughter had made her way into the bathroom and was throwing up into the toilet. My first night of writing was officially over before I had finished typing in the title. This incident reminded me that although the privilege of raising children becomes more ingrained and much more manageable as children grow up, the unpredictability can bring about chaos at any time. The good news, aside from the fact that my daughter recovered quickly, is that as we improve at coping with unexpected and less controllable events we are better able to bounce back from short-term setbacks and enjoy rather than endure our daily lives. It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father. -- Pope John XXIII