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Today’s Family Man
“Tapping Dad’s Potential”
By Gregory Keer

Even though more men are choosing greater involvement with their families, miles of improvement are still needed to shrink the gap between the average mom and typical dad. Much is said about what the guys lack and should do to make things better. But what can the women involved do to help a father tap his potential?

1. Acknowledge the Changing Stereotype
If seeing more men at the park in the middle of a weekday or carrying a macho-looking diaper bag isn’t enough, statistics might help women see that today’s family man is different than that of generations past. A recent National Center for Fathering-Gallup Poll found that more than 90% of fathers are present at their kid’s births. A 1991 survey, reported by the Dallas Morning News, revealed that more than 75% of men would rather have more time with their families than get a job promotion. Going further, there are more men taking the primary child care duties, whether it’s because their wives are working more or because they are single dads.

Part of the reason for this is that many men want to be around more than their fathers might have been. The drive to improve things for their own kids makes them drive more carpool, get home on time for dinner, and take real vacation time that focuses on the kids.

Women can play up the trends and intentions by planning more social time with families that have involved dads. Men respond well to competition and presenting them with other guys who are breaking the old father stereotypes might encourage them to do the same.

2. Men Still Have Pressure to Fit Old Stereotypes
Despite the changed in how men view childcare commitment, they are still subject to the old expectations of being the primary breadwinner. Many guys feel inadequate if they don’t make as much money as their working women. And the media still reflects a general dominance of male CEOs, mainstream workers, and politicians.

Women can address these issues by removing the competitive factor that has arisen between spouses. Explain to your partner that you don’t care who makes more money in the house since it all ends up helping the family. More importantly, emphasize that what you and your husband are doing is modeling for your children. Your husband can be a leader in his own home by showing his kids that he doesn’t care about who’s #1 in money-making. What matters is the effort put into it. Then there’s the issue of the “other #1” – being a #1 father.

3. Help Him Get Involved Early
Momentum is huge in just about any long-term endeavor. That’s why the sooner a father gets involved in being a parent, the better the chance he will stay in the groove over the decades. Just as conception is always a two-person job (even with modern fertility methods), be sure to keep everything else related to the child a partnership. Read pregnancy books together, go shopping for nursery items together, and go to birthing class and the hospital together. After birth, maintain the rhythm by having dad change diapers, read to baby, and feed baby bottles (breastfeeding moms can still have father give a bottle each day or a couple a week).

4. Get Out of Dad’s Way
Yes, a woman carries a growing baby in her womb, gives birth, and often breastfeeds the child. That doesn’t mean a man lacks the desire to nurture. Some men have a hard time finding that nurturing impulse, which is why the momentum factor is important to start before the birth.

On the flip side, there are guys want to be VERY involved, but have spouses who keep all the fun to themselves. Lots of evidence points to baby’s needing more of Mommy than Daddy, especially early on, yet mounting statistics proves the significance of fatherly involvement in developing children. Studies show that children with fathers who care for them, especially from infancy, end up more secure in life, among other benefits.

Still, a lot of women think they know how to care for children best. They tell dads how to do everything, down to the smallest detail. If the fathers do something differently from the moms, they are reprimanded and often taken off some parenting duties. This is detrimental to the father, who needs confidence in his abilities, and the child, who just needs Daddy to round out her life experience.

The key here is to understand that different is not wrong. If a father feeds the kids something other than what a mother suggests, it can still be OK (as long as the food’s relatively nutritious). If Dad takes the children to the movies instead of reading books, that can be all right, too, because it’s still parenting time. It’s also important to recognize that fathers parent differently. Dads let kids roughhouse more and take more chances. This is different than moms but good for children’s developing understanding of the world and their limits.

One terrific way for a mom to let go a little more is to have a dad take one night or one weekend day alone with the kids. Mom can go out with friends, out of town, whatever, as long as dad must fend for himself. It’s tough for most dads (heck, it’s hard for moms too), but this will allow a man to figure out his own pattern with the kids and not rely on the crutch of a mother. Certainly, keep the cell phone line open for questions, but resist the urge to check in or else risk insulting a father’s capability.

5. Applaud His Efforts
We all need praise for what we do. It’s not that fathers need more of it – actually, they do. The fact is that, while stereotypes are changing, Mom is still the go-to parent in most families. The only way to ensure the shrinkage of the gap between mother and father involvement is for the dad to feel in control, confident, and satisfied. Tell your partner what he does well more than criticize him for where he falls flat. You can offer advice, but do it as a team, saying, “This is what we both need to work on.” The more a father gets in the regular rhythm of child care, the more natural it will be for the man to make good on his potential.

© 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Gregory Keer is a syndicated columnist, educator, and on-air expert on fatherhood. His Family Man TM column appears in publications such as L.A. Parent, Boston Parents' Paper, Metro Augusta Parent, and Sydney's Child in Australia. Keer's parenting advice is found at his online magazine, www.familymanonline.com. In addition to writing for Parenting magazine and the Parents' Choice Foundation, Keer contributes to USA Today, Pregnancy magazine, DrLaura.com, ParentingBookmark.com, Pregnancy.org, and CanadianParents.com. With parents all over the country, Keer works as a parenting coach and can be contacted at http://www.familymanonline.com/section.php?section=consulting for further details. In the media, he is a featured guest expert on television and radio and advisor to the Cartoon Network. He and his wife are the proud parents of three sons. Keer can be reached at his Web site, www.familymanonline.com.

Today’s Family Man
“Sight and Sound”
By Gregory Keer

There was the infant circumcision mishap that luckily left my first born intact. There was Jacob’s fall on the sharp corner of an old stereo speaker that had us running to a plastic surgeon for stitches near his eye. And there was baby Ari’s severe respiratory illness that resulted in a harrowing stay at the hospital.

As much as we expect bad stuff to happen to our kids, we just can’t prepare for the distress that occurs when it does. We spend so much of our day saying, “Don’t stand on this” or “Stop running around the pool” that there seems to be little else to parenting other than the attempt to prevent disasters.

Then there are the things that occur that can’t be stopped by warnings or quick reflexes. While most of them may not be life threatening, these physical and mental effects throw us for quite a loop.

In the spring of this year, our seven-year-old’s left eye had become so weak that he rarely used it to see past three feet in front of him. Friends and relatives asked us about Benjamin’s habit of turning his head to the left to relieve the strain on his eye. Whether he was watching TV or listening in the classroom, he seemed to have a perpetual RCA dog pose, only it wasn’t so cute to watch him struggle to focus.

What compounded our frustration for Benjamin was that, when he was four, he had strabismus surgery to strengthen his right eye and make the pair work more in concert. This followed months of ophthalmology appointments and patching the strong eye to help fortify the weak one.

The surgery worked -- too well. Benjamin started tilting his head the other way as his left eye became the more timid one. We didn’t patch, partly because kids had previously teased and asked Benjamin if his eye had fallen out. We tried glasses and eye exercises, but nothing really helped.

So, there we were, watching Benjamin get “drunk” on a sedative as he prepared to go under general anesthesia for his second eye surgery. Waiting for him to emerge from the operating room was bad enough. It was the post-operative recovery time of watching him cry fitfully, try to throw off his monitoring cords, and plead to go home that tore at our hearts.

Now, Benjamin’s eyes work together, though we’re unsure if another surgery might be needed down the line. It makes us feel pretty powerless.

This feeling extends to our second son as well. Jacob’s stammering began six months ago. While we learned that this speech problem is normal for a three-year-old, the symptom seemed to stem from a drive to more speedily articulate what was going on in Jacob’s 300-horsepower brain.

Always an intense kid, Jacob cries louder, breaks rules more frequently, and whirls in motion more than most children his age. He also has an obsessive-compulsiveness that makes him change his clothes several times a morning and go ballistic over how we attach the straps of his shoes.

We think that some of Jacob’s frustrations come from his desperate desire to be as advanced as his older brother. Yet Jacob’s constant refusal to cooperate in the classroom, with grandparents, and at home was wearing us down. We worried about his running into the street to defy us and a relentless habit of putting inanimate objects in his mouth.

None of our discipline tactics worked, so we opted to speak with psychology professionals at a local university. After questioning us and observing Jacob, they concluded that he did exhibit hyperactivity. They suggested courses of action, including behavior modification and taking a special parenting class, but one of the experts scared the heck out of us with warnings about other disorders that might grow out of his current conduct.

Now this advice was well intended in light of the damage that certain behavior could do to Jacob’s academic progress and self-esteem in a world in which relative calm is expected. But, as we drove home from that appointment with our funny, loving, clever bundle of energy, we decided to go the parenting class route because we want to first learn how to handle our own behavior when faced with his challenges.

Stepping back from this all, I see that my children’s problems are minor compared to what other kids suffer with disabilities and severe illnesses. So, with Thanksgiving around the corner, this is a time when I am truly thankful for my kids’ general health and happiness. It’s a time when I tell myself that, while these parenting tests give me a lot to worry about, they also provide the huge rewards of seeing my children through life’s trials.

© 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Gregory Keer is a syndicated columnist, educator, and on-air expert on fatherhood. His Family Man TM column appears in publications across the country, including L.A. Parent, Boston Parents' Paper, Metro Augusta Parent, and Sydney's Child in Australia. Keer's parenting advice is found at his online magazine, www.familymanonline.com, which is the #1 ranked site for fathers, according to Amazon’s Alexa ratings.

In addition to writing for Parenting magazine and the Parents' Choice Foundation, Keer contributes to USA Today, Pregnancy magazine, DrLaura.com, ParentingBookmark.com, Pregnancy.org, and CanadianParents.com. Keer is also a featured guest expert on television and radio and advisor to the Cartoon Network. He and his wife are the proud parents of three sons. Keer can be reached at his Web site, www.familymanonline.com.

Today’s Family Man
"Being a Man Means Stopping Domestic Violence"
By Gregory Keer

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM), a designation that began in 1995 as concern and ideas for stopping abuse reached a peak. Today, this issue needs to be at the forefront if family men want to raise happy children and lead contented lives, themselves. While violence in the home isn’t committed exclusively by men, we are the major culprits. Men in our society are taught that being in control is masculine, which is just one reason violence becomes an option in fits of anger. A history of violence in the family, passed down from parents, is also a huge contributing factor.

This is a problem with such complexity, and such a tremendous stigma, that talking about it becomes crucial. Men who abuse their partners or children usually feel shame and want to stop it, and sometimes they don’t realize that they are abusive. Examples of domestic violence – be it physical (including sexual) or verbal – can include everything from threatening someone to that mistaken slap in anger to actual beating.

Statistics
Numbers reported by the American Bar Association show that at least 1 million women suffer nonfatal violence at the hands of someone they are close to.

In one year alone, more than 500,000 men were arrested for committing violence against women, as opposed to less than 50,000 women being arrested for committing violence against men.

And, according to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a national survey found that “50 percent of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. ”

What to Do
All dads should do everything they can to prepare for parenting in the most emotionally stable way they can. For some fathers, it’s more difficult, which is why it’s a good idea to consider

• keeping yourself healthy (mentally and physically),

• taking parenting classes,

• and even seeking professional help if you have been a victim of abuse as a child.

There are many experts out there who can help men end aggression toward women and children. Rob Okun of the Men’s Resource Center is committed to helping men face and defeat the demons that cause them to be violent in his nationally recognized domestic violence groups. In these groups, meetings focus on learning to:

• identify abusive behaviors and the warning signs that lead up to them

• practice strategies for choosing alternatives to violence and abuse

• recognize the effects of violence on family members

• develop respect for their partners and children

• think about how socialization contributes to their need to abuse and control others.

Resources
DVAM is simply a reason to begin the dialogue and, hopefully, end a cycle of violence that threatens our sons and daughters. More resources include the National Domestic Violence Hotline -- and the Gabe Kapler Foundation. Kapler, a member of the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox, started this organization with his wife Lisa, herself the victim of dating violence at the hand of a boyfriend prior to meeting Kapler. At Family Man Online , men and women may learn about other resources and use our discussion boards (anonymously, if you’d like) to get support from other parents.

The way to truly help each other is to talk, guide, and vent. No one can expect to be in control all the time, and mistakes happen. But addressing the mistakes so they don’t become or continue as a pattern is essential.

FamilyManOnline.com © 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Gregory Keer is a syndicated columnist, educator, and on-air expert on fatherhood. His Family ManTM column appears in publications across the country, including L.A. Parent, Boston Parents' Paper, Metro Augusta Parent, and Sydney's Child in Australia. Keer's parenting advice is found at his online magazine, www.familymanonline.com, which is the #1 ranked site for fathers, according to Amazon’s Alexa ratings. In addition to writing for Parenting magazine and the Parents' Choice Foundation, Keer contributes to USA Today, Pregnancy magazine, DrLaura.com, ParentingBookmark.com, Pregnancy.org, and CanadianParents.com. Keer is also a featured guest expert on television and radio and advisor to the Cartoon Network. He and his wife are the proud parents of three sons. Keer can be reached at his Web site, www.familymanonline.com.

Today’s Family Man
“Night of the Shrinking Bed”
By Gregory Keer

On a cold night last year, my wife and I endured a fifth straight evening of multiple wake-ups from our newborn. After two feedings, three walks around the house, and four false-alarm cries, Wendy and I trembled with exhaustion. This was compounded by the stress of having just moved to a new home, my starting a teaching gig, and our older sons kicking off a new school year.

Finally, sleep came and, when it did, I went down hard.

That was until I felt a “presence” hovering over me. Dog-tired, I kept snoring. Then I heard a faint wheezing. The wheezing turned to heavy breathing, which got louder and louder. High-pitched moaning pierced my eardrums and my eyes snapped open.

A dark shape stood next to me, holding what looked like an axe!

I screamed. “Ahhhhhh!!!!.”

My wife jumped up and shrieked, “Where’s the baby?”

The figure screamed back. “Dadddeee!!!”

Bolting upright, I recognized the shape as my son, Benjamin. The axe I imagined was his tattered blanket.

My son burst into tears and fell across me in the aftermath of what had been a twisted recreation of the movie scene in which Drew Barrymore sees E.T. for the first time. In this case, I was Drew Barrymore.

“What were you doing standing over me like that?” I said breathlessly.

“I – just – wanted – to – cuddle,” Benjamin blurted between sobs.

And there it was. The dramatic comeuppance for two parents who had long struggled with the issue of a family bed.

Before my wife and I had children, we swore we'd never let our kids sleep with us. We judged others who let their kids in the bed, thinking that kind of arrangement could only create intimacy problems for the couple and therapy sessions for the children.

Sometime later, we found ourselves changing our tune. It began when Benjamin, then almost three and new to a “big boy” bed without rails, started sneaking into our room in the middle of the night. Due to fatigue and the sheer joy of cuddling, we let him snuggle with us for a few hours each night. This went on for a couple of years until Jacob got old enough to leave the crib and want his own time in Mommy and Daddy’s bed.

So we started a campaign to keep the kids on their own mattresses. We told them that they could crawl in with us in the morning, when it was light outside. Jacob, always a deeper sleeper, was easier to keep to the new rule. But we had to experiment with all kinds of tricks to keep Benjamin in his room. Over time, we tried clocks, a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor, extra stuffed animals, a special pillow, and just plain begging with intermittent success.

Then, there was the previously mentioned night of all that wheezing and screaming.

After we all calmed down, I escorted Benjamin to his bed, reminding him of the house rules. A little later, he returned. I got crankier and he went away wailing again. This back-and-forth occurred every 10 minutes, as he tried to gain our sympathy and we used every tactic from yelling to listing all the playdates he was going to lose.

Then, my son Jacob joined the fray, shouting out like a lost child that his pull-up needed to be changed. Jacob fell back asleep but he was replaced by the dog that scratched at the door to go outside and the cat that upchucked a fur ball on the bed. All the while, my wife and I bickered about how to handle the whole mess.

I pleaded with our first-born. I even cried when he cried, asking for mercy on his exhausted father who had to wake up to teach cranky high-school sophomores in the morning.

Finally, with Benjamin as worn out as I was, I found clarity – kind of like a Bugs Bunny horror spoof in which the rabbit realizes the way to stop the monster is by complimenting him (“Gee, Doc, you got really big muscles.”) So, I appealed to Benjamin’s desire to feel like the big boy he was.

"You graduated from kindergarten and now you're a first grader,” I explained. “It's time to graduate to sleeping the whole night on your own. You can do this." I then promised him a reward chart that would track how many nights he could stay in his bed.

Things have been much better ever since. Benjamin still crawls into bed with us at 6am or so, but he's proud of himself. He’s graduated to sleeping on his own and we have our bed back. Now, if we could only get our baby to stop kicking his crib like a T-Rex three times a night, we could actually get some sleep.

© 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Gregory Keer is a syndicated columnist, educator, and on-air expert on fatherhood. His Family Man TM column appears in publications across the country, including L.A. Parent, Boston Parents' Paper, Metro Augusta Parent, and Sydney's Child in Australia. Keer's parenting advice is found at his online fatherhood magazine, www.familymanonline.com.  In addition to writing for Parenting magazine and the Parents' Choice Foundation, Keer contributes to USA Today, Pregnancy magazine, DrLaura.com, ParentingBookmark.com, Pregnancy.org, and CanadianParents.com. Keer is also a featured guest expert on television and radio and advisor to the Cartoon Network. He and his wife are the proud parents of three sons. Keer can be reached at his Web site, www.familymanonline.com.

Today’s Family Man
“Grosser Than Gross”
By Gregory Keer

Before I had my first child, one of my biggest fears was taking him to the bathroom at a sporting event. While other men worried about midnight feedings and dropping a baby on his head, I fretted over a trip to one of the satellite offices of Germ Industries.

Flash forward to Benjamin’s first pro baseball game. With the sun shining and the home team winning, I was in heaven as I sat with my three-year-old, cracking peanut shells. In the eighth inning, Benjamin finished his lemonade, jumped up, and did the “pee dance.” My stomach dropped.

“If you can wait, we’ll be home in a half-hour,” I lied.

Benjamin’s eyes nearly crossed as he held it all in. So I walked him up the stairs as if approaching the door to Linda Blair’s room in The Exorcist, and entered the eighth-level of hell.

As we moved through an oppressive crowd of beer-drenched guys, Benjamin bee-lined for the urine “trough” and was about to reach his hand in to play with the deodorizing cakes when I pulled him back with enough force to make him cry. After calming him down, we got in line for a toilet, and waited an eternity in the hot, pungent room.

Once inside a stall, Benjamin was awed by the double toilet-paper dispenser, the sanitary seat covers, and the cool oval-shaped toilet seat.

“Don’t – touch – ANY – THING!” I bellowed, startling him again.

“OK, but I have to go poopie,” he said pitifully.

With every obsessive-compulsive alarm shouting at me, I cleaned the puddles off the seat with toilet paper. Disgusted, I pulled him out of the stall to quickly wash my hands, and returned to find another man using our toilet. He soon left, but I went back in to find -- the seat newly sprayed!

At this point, I lost all sense of decorum. I wiped the seat, pulled out a tissue cover, and sat my son down. Frankly, Benjamin could care less about the microbes attacking us from all sides. He just did his business, asking questions about baseball, monkeys, and hot dog condiments.

When we finally left, only a half-inning had expired, but I felt strangely different. I realized no one was going to die of bacterial infection and there was a ballgame to watch with my son.

Parenthood has changed my attitude toward a lot of things I once considered too disgusting to handle. Now on my third infant, I barely notice yellowish-brown poop splotches on my sleeve and wear spit-up like a badge of honor. The cheesy white stuff on the back of my black T-shirt says, “Nothing grosses me out -- I’m a father.”

I used to wince at seeing adults clean boogers with flimsy tissues, but now I willingly offer my sleeve to wipe my kids’ noses. My wife goes one better. In the middle of a charming musical performance at school, Jacob (3) let out a sneeze that would’ve made the old whale in Pinocchio proud. And there, for all to see, was a drooping trail of snot that had the parents in the audience repelled and giggling. Without hesitation, Wendy ran up to the stage and wiped her little guy’s nose clean with her bare hand!

All that mucous is nothing compared to my pre-parenthood fear of long-tailed, disease-ridden rats. I had nightmares of having to climb through infested attics to change traps and meet angry rodent relatives. Well, a few weeks back, I was pulling into my driveway when my sister, visiting with her family, waved to me from the front door. Not realizing that she was warning and not greeting, I rolled into my parking spot -- right over the carcass of a dead rat. The popping sound alone was enough to make me cringe. Worse was having to clean up the carnage without looking like the total ninny that I felt like.

My brother-in-law, Tim, himself a little shy about rat entrails, volunteered to help me dispose of the unfortunate creature. His bravery had the same motivation as mine. We wanted to show our kids that things like this just happen and can be handled without freaking out like some weak contestant on Fear Factor. So, Tim scooped up the deceased while I held the body bag and hosed the remains down the driveway.

Before children, I would have hired a specialist to get rid of a dead rat and called a Hazardous Materials team to change a diaper. But I’ve changed for the better. By handling guts and germs without publicly cringing, I’m teaching my kids not to fear these little disgusting parts of life. I’d rather they fear strangers, oncoming cars, and hot stoves than microorganisms and natural body functions. Yeah, I’m one tough daddy now -- just don’t ask me to clean a high chair. Now THAT’s gross.

© 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Gregory Keer is a syndicated columnist, teacher, and on-air expert on fatherhood. His Family Man TM column appears in publications across the country, including L.A. Parent, Boston Parents' Paper, Metro Augusta Parent, and Sydney's Child in Australia. Keer's parenting advice is found at his online fatherhood magazine, FamilyManOnline.com. In addition to writing for Parenting magazine and the Parents' Choice Foundation, he contributes the Today’s Family Man feature to such sites as DrLaura.com, ParentingBookmark.com, ModernMom.com, and CanadianParents.com. Keer is a featured guest expert in national print, television, and radio. He and his wife are the proud parents of three sons. To learn more, visit www.familymanonline.com.

Today’s Family Man
“Holding Back the Years ”
By Gregory Keer

In the midst of feeding baby Ari his lunch, I touch the first three fingers of each of my hands together. I’m using baby sign language for the word “more.”

Ari, who’s all of seven months, squints at me, organic bananas and oatmeal caked on his face like a blonde five o’clock shadow. He seems to be saying, if a baby could imitate Clint Eastwood, “I don’t get your meaning, compadre.”

So, I utter the words “more” while signing vigorously.

Ari’s tough-guy image fades and his bottom lip quivers.

I sign again and pretend to eat his food.

WAAAHHH! Ari wails piercingly and I hastily pop the spoon in his mouth. As he sucks down the goop, he looks at me as if to say, “Please don’t do that again.”

Now, my wife Wendy and I taught our first two kids to use the “more” and “all done” signals by the time they were Ari’s age. So, we worry, a little, about his development. But we know the problem is not Ari. It’s us. We’re hurrying him to show us progress so we can feel like effective parents.

We get anxious over our other children, too, especially regarding school. Early last year, in first grade, Benjamin could barely sound out a word in his phonics reader. Other children his age read everything from road signs to Jigsaw Jones books. Anxiously, we forced Benjamin to practice nightly and fretted when he’d haltingly make out syllables, then throw the book across the room.

With Jacob in preschool, our concerns centered on his “pulsiveness.” While others practiced writing their names, he impulsively took children’s papers and pencils. As most kids dashed off to the playground to practice their tricycling and social skills, Jacob dallied in the restroom, compulsively trying to tear off a perfectly straight paper towel.

Actually, he seemed less concerned about keeping up with his contemporaries than being like his big brother -- or becoming an adult. When we got frustrated with his lack of learning, he said things like, “When I’m a daddy, I’ll be able to swim, right?” Or, “When I’m a daddy, it’s OK for me to drive a car?” We started to think he worked so hard to get ahead that he couldn’t just be in the moment. He was always thinking way down the line.

And yet, school wasn’t the only area in which we too often pressed our children. We packed their after-school schedules with sports, music, karate, and even chess classes.

Later in the year, I slowed down enough to grapple with the key question: What’s the big rush to have my kids achieve? Aren’t my wife and I the same people who start to cry about how fast they’re growing up whenever we see Benjamin singing in a school play or Jacob painting a surprisingly discernible human figure?

So why don’t we appreciate these moments, let them brew in our minds, enjoying the aroma of success rather than propelling our kids to hurry up the next ladder rung?

Well, we’re trying. After speaking to Benjamin’s teacher last year, she told us not force him to read to us until he was ready. She promised that she would keep him moving forward. Within a few weeks, he was proudly reading step-one books aloud. Several weeks later, he was reciting passages of more complicated tomes to his brothers. By the end of spring, he was blowing through fourth-grade level Secrets of Droon books so intently that he didn’t hear us calling him to dinner (he didn’t hear us before, but now he has an excuse).

For Jacob, while we recognize that he has the descriptive vocabulary of a movie critic and would really rather be a 39-year-old father of three, we want him to grow at a pace that fits his age. So, we’ve decided to hold him back for another year of preschool (he’s still only three-and-a-half) to let him be one of the kids at the forefront for a while. He may enjoy showing other children the ropes and may feel more at ease with himself.

As the new school season begins, Wendy and I are shaving off a couple of extracurriculars for Benjamin and keeping things simple for Jacob. Of course I’ll bug Benjamin to do his homework and encourage Jacob to give up his pacifier before the year’s end. And I’ll still try to teach Ari baby signs, though he’ll probably be reciting Shakespeare before he makes the “more” signal.

Still, in this new school year, I plan to appreciate my children’s individual progress. They are remarkable and, whether they prove to be Einstein and Gates or Beavis and Butthead, I’ll celebrate their successes, one step at a time.

© 2005 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.