Welcome to Week 3 of Manly Mondays after Daddy of The Peanuts Gang had off for Labor Day last Monday (and therefore took a day off from the blog)! He’s back today with an…um…interesting perspective on fatherhood!
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Being in the toddler and baby stage can be emasculating for some dads. After all, changing diapers and chasing runaway 3-year olds isn’t quite like the good old days of free time, golf and football. Some men just take one for the team. Others become absentee parents. I’m here to tell you that you can parent your young-uns and keep your man card.
First tip – being a father of such young humans is survival 101. Think bears (not the future NFL champion Chicago bears, but an actual, ferocious, black bear you might find in the woods). To survive a bear encounter, you generally need to stay as quiet as possible. If the bear continues to approach, you make as much noise as possible and flail your arms. As a last resort, you fight back. Picture the times your kids fight as a bear attack. 1. Be quiet. Drop their decibel level by whispering. Say things like, “I can’t hear you when you scream that loud.” 2. If they keep it up, make lots of noise. Bluff that you’re mad and say absurd things like how you’re losing your marbles. Don’t laugh at how ridiculous you sound. 3. If that fails, fight back with time outs. 4. If the preceding fails, lie in the fetal position and pray for help.
Second tip – all those manly things you’ve learned over the years are not abandoned just because of the kids! Insert the art of manliness into every day occurrences with your kids. For example, when one of my kids gets in trouble after not listening, I recite the famous “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” Cool Hand Luke speech. Not only is it great to say in a moment of communication failure, but the kids will learn the imparted manly wisdom.
Above all else, raising kids is like a massive DIY project. But you can’t run to Home Depot to get supplies and you have no idea why anyone put you in charge. What other manliness can you add to your every day parenting?
John tries to keep parenting manly by teaching the boys very manly movie quotes. You know that game kids play where they copy everything you say? John’s *favorite* game. He recites lines from The Godfather or other movies he likes to get the kids to say them. He also got him to recite half of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song once. His proudest moment: Cooper telling me, “Take the gun, leave the cannoli.”
HAHAHAH! Oh my word….these boys are nothing but puppets I suppose! 😉