Is Your Family Brunch-Close?

At a bed and breakfast in Asheville a few weeks ago my wife and I met a couple from Maryland, and over breakfast one morning we exchanged a CliffsNotes version of our lives: place of birth, occupation, residence, family members and the like. After learning that the couple’s daughter lived in New York, I said, “That’s not too bad. Fairly close to Maryland.”

“Yes,” answered the mother. “But she’s not brunch-close. People tell me how lucky I am that she’s not in California or some other state far away, but it’s not like we can get together for brunch on Sundays.”

Brunch-close. Precisely. That’s what I want. Instead, I have a daughter who lives five hours away, a son who lives six hours away, and another daughter who lives…well, a four-hour plane ride away (I’ve never gotten the gumption to drive to Los Angeles). The mother from Maryland’s point is well-taken; even five hours away is four hours too far to get together for a Sunday brunch.

I’ve lamented before that I raised three kids only to have them move away. Perhaps if my wife and I had refused to pay for out-of-state universities we’d have had a fighting chance, but we did well enough financially that we basically gave our children a green light to drift away, an irony that isn’t lost on me; I’d gladly reduce our 401k balance by half if it meant having our three children live nearby. Guess we mucked that one up!

The geographical distance between family members has other ramifications: it means we vacation less. When my wife and I lived on the east coast, we’d travel to Milwaukee, Chicago and Dallas regularly to see family, and with only two weeks of vacation allowed per year by our employers, that’s pretty much all we could do aside from a weekend camping trip. Now that our children have grown and moved far away, most of our vacation time is spent visiting our children in their respective locations.

Last week a friend of mine suggested that we meet some friends in Portugal next summer – a lovely idea. But we’re planning on visiting family in January (New York), March (Arizona) and April (Ohio), watching our son graduate from college in May (Ohio) and attending my daughter’s wedding in October (California), undoubtedly interspersed with other trips to see our other daughter (Kentucky). So sure, we can go to Portugal next summer, but it probably means we see our children less, a lousy trade-off to have to make.

I know. Such are the problems of a healthy, married, middle-aged white guy with solid financials. In the words of Joe Walsh from his classic song, “Life’s Been Good”:

I can’t complain but sometimes I still do

Yep. Nothing’s going to stop me until my kids live close.

Enter Empty-Nesterdom

I’ve recently joked with some friends of mine: “I’ll be an empty-nester in September.  When you see a flare, come with a few beers and rescue me.”

This Friday my wife and I enter Empty-Nesterdom.  For the first time since December of 1996, when a bout of nausea prompted us to stop by CVS for a quick pregnancy test, we will no longer devote a large percentage of thought and energy to our children.  At least not all the time.  Granted, our son’s increasingly independent lifestyle over the last number of years has gradually given my wife and me more time on our own, and we’ve slowly grown accustomed to what life might look like on the other side, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t have a degree of trepidation about the future.  None of our kids will be an easy drive away, and one isn’t even an easy flight away.  We won’t be able to plan a spontaneous lunch or walk with our kids.  Every visit will have to be crosschecked against multiple calendars and planned in advance.  When our twin girls left for school five years ago, we ended up seeing one of them once a semester (Kentucky) and the other once a year (California).  Cincinnati will similarly limit our visits, and we may go for long periods of time without seeing any of them.

Although my three kids are doing pretty well, I’ve found that having adult children leads to a different sort of parental anxiety, because adult children have adult problems.  Gone are the days when their spirits could be lifted merely by me picking them up and jumping up and down.  God, I loved those days.  I love these days too for sure.  It’s just more uncertain, and I of course have little to no control of the situation.  Last week I looked over a 401k rollover procedure for my daughter, and I was happy to actually contribute something of value.   I love it when there’s a right answer to a problem. 

Mostly, though, it’s not so simple.  A while back, the psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb wrote a great article in The Atlantic called “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.”  It’s nearly a decade old now, but the revelations still ring true: that as parents we’ve overprotected our children to the extent that they experience difficulty in their twenties and thirties, so unable are they to handle challenges, to be resilient in the face of difficulties.  The article is well-summarized by the following sentence: “…many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment, with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.”

This was written in 2011 when the worries of much of the world paled in comparison to what young people face today.  We’re asking an awful lot of young adults to handle the adversities of COVID-19, a sinking economy, isolation, cancelled school, melting icecaps, political divisiveness, mean-spirited leaders, hateful mob mentality gone rampant online, and a whole host of other concerns, when we as adults set them up for failure to overcome life’s great challenges.

I’d like to think that my wife and I didn’t fall into the overprotective parenting trap, but I’m sure I’m fooling myself.  I’m sure I sent one to many emails to their teachers over the years and had my kids check in too often when they were out.  Ultimately, we probably did okay, but I believe that my children are up to the task of weathering life’s great challenges likely in spite of their upbringing rather than because of it.  It’s not going to be easy, but I believe that they’ll be among those who navigate these treacherous times, not with perfection, but with perseverance.

But a larger question looms: will my wife and I be up to the task?  Will we find balance, meaning and determination absent the diversion of active parenting? 

Stay tuned.

Our Kids' Lives: Regimented and Expensive

I spend a boatload of cash each year for my son to do something I did for free as a kid. And it annoys the crap out of me.

On Facebook a friend of mine recently posted the following article from the Washington Post:  “I send my kids to sleep-away camp to give them a competitive advantage in life.” These kind of headlines are meant to elicit a response. One camp might be thinking, “Holy crap. I’ve never sent my kids to over-night camp. Could I be denying his opportunity to get into an Ivy League school?” Another camp might think, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Whatever happened to sending kids to camp so that they have a great time?” 

The content of the essay is more thoughtful than the headline, and the takeaway is this: some of the basic things we did as kids for fun may have been beneficial for us in ways we didn’t even know, and it might behoove us as parents to – as the author Laura Clydesdale writes – opt out of the "things-to-put-on-the-college-application arms race.” Instead of creating walking, talking resumes, why not nourish thoughtful, creative, independent human beings? That’s really the goal. The fact that a thoughtful, creative and independent human being will invariably have a competitive edge over robotic peers is icing on the cake.

Several years ago I read an excellent book called “The Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit disorder.” In it author Richard Louv creates a compelling case for allowing our children to break out of the regimented lifestyles we’ve created for our kids – much of it indoors – and instead give them more access to nature, which not only feeds a child’s development, but can also help alleviate symptoms of ADD, obesity and other widespread ailments of today’s children. Even something as basic is going camping as a family can provide a huge benefit for children, and ultimately provide a huge benefit for nature, as people who have a relationship with nature are far more likely to fight to save it. Time spent at a camp, where a kid can break away from wired worlds, take some time to reflect, and experience activities that are foreign to a life in the city or suburbs, can be as mentally and physically beneficial as it is downright fun.

Now, here’s my beef with all of this. Today, every activity our children are engaged in seems to be planned and administered by adults, and overnight camp is of course no exception. This also means it costs money.

My son plays drums in a band. I played keyboard in a band when I was a teenager. In my son’s band, adults pick the players, adults pick the songs, adults pick who plays on which songs, adults provide the equipment, adults plan the gigs and adults provide logistics. In my band, adults did nothing except provide a space for practice and offer an occasional ride. My son’s band costs me thousands of dollars a year. My band cost me nothing except an occasional headache as we tried to figure out the lyrics to songs pre-Internet.

I learned a lot by being in a band with other teenagers. I learned how to compromise, I learned how to not overplay (though this took several years), I learned about how to get along with different types of people, and I learned about my limitations as a performer, as a musician, and – at times – as a human being. My son has learned some of these things too, but nothing that he’s experienced can compare to sitting in a room with four other musicians and saying, “Okay. We need to learn thirty songs and find a gig so that we can play them. Ready?” There’s no doubt in my mind that my experience was richer and more developmental than my son’s has been.

Similarly, I never went to camp as a child. But I did ride my bike constantly, I walked my dog through the expansive fields behind the middle school near my home, and I played in numerous forests in my hometown, where I would make up games with my friends, climb trees, get into arguments, injure myself or others, and – on a particularly lucky day - discover a Penthouse that a classmate kept hidden in the hallow of a tree. Again, I did this for free. And as cool and rich as my children’s camp experiences have been all these years, I’m not sure the adult-supervised activities provided the same benefit as my independent ventures did.

What’s particularly problematic is this: unless you reach critical mass, “opting-out” simply means your kid spends time alone (which does have some benefits but also its limitations). I would like my son to quit his organized, adult-supervised band, but unless I can convince other parents to do the same, it will lead to a band of one. Not so much fun. Breaking away from regimentation only works when you convince others to do the same.

So what’s the answer? Well, I am going to make a concerted appeal to the parents of my son’s band to quit organized music and have our sons and daughters move forward on their own. Will I be successful? I kind of doubt it. But our kids know how to play their instruments, they know fellow musicians, and now it’s time to sink or swim. My son will be richer for it, and if I succeed, so will his parents.

World Series Start Times: MLB's Shortsighted Gamble

Woe to the child sports fan who has the misfortune of living in the Eastern Time Zone.  The 2013 World Series is only two games old, and I doubt there’s a kid on the East Coast under the age of 16 who’s watched beyond the 8^th inning of either game.  Both games began at 8:07PM EST and lasted in excess of 3 hours.  These start times are slightly earlier than the 2008 series, when games didn’t start until 8:29 and 8:37, but the MLB and FOX ought to look at more dramatic changes if the health of baseball is to be considered over immediate financial gains.

In 2009, Bud Selig said, “Our goal is to schedule games to allow the largest number of people to watch.”  With a country as vast as the U.S., this goal is unquestionably a tricky balancing act.

The approximate makeup of the United States by time zone is as follows:

Eastern.......................47.0%

Central........................32.9%

Mountain.......................5.4%

Pacific.........................14.1%

Alaska and Hawaii........0.6 %

Assuming children are distributed in the same proportions as the overall population, this means that 80 percent of kids would have had to stay up after 10PM to finish games one and two of this year’s World Series, with nearly half having to stay up after 11PM.  Couple this with the fact that this year’s representative cities are located in the Central and Eastern time zones, and it’s easy to see that the goal of scheduling “games to allow the largest number of people to watch” probably isn’t being achieved, especially among young fans.

All this is in light of recent evidence that baseball’s popularity is decreasing among our youth.  Google the phrase “popularity of baseball kids decreasing” and see what comes up.  It’s doubtful that a child who doesn’t care about baseball today is going to start investing time and money into the sport as an adult, so why not make it easier for kids to actually watch the games right now?

World Series games used to be held in the daytime, also not an ideal scenario for kids since many of these games were played during school hours.  But in the 70s and early 80s, there seemed to be a nice balance: weekday games took place during the evening (albeit a little too late at times), and weekend games were often played during the day. 

In 1982, when the Milwaukee Brewers made the series, I was fourteen years-old, and I watched every game in its entirety, even attending game five (without parents!).  Start times were as follows (all times CST)

Game 1, Tuesday, 7:30

Game 2, Wednesday, 7:20

Game 3, Friday, 7:30

Game 4, Saturday, 12:20

Game 5, Sunday, 3:45

Game 6, Tuesday, 7:20

Game 7, Wednesday, 7:20

Push the weekday start times to 7PM CST for the East Coast fans, and I’d say that’s a pretty perfect schedule.  As it was, both teams were from the Central Time Zone, so the start times were ideal for the most interested fans.  Unfortunately, short-term greed changed things, and the last day game played in a World Series was game 6 of 1987.

In light of the recent downturn in popularity, Major League Baseball should consider the following:

1)      Incorporate flexibility in the schedule so that start times can be adjusted based on who’s playing in the series.  In 2008, two East Coast teams played each other, and games didn’t start until around 8:30 EST – absolutely ridiculous.  Games could easily have started an hour to an hour and a half earlier while still attracting the primary audience.  Last year’s series between San Francisco and Detroit was perhaps best served with the 8:00 EST.

2)      If flexibility is impossible, schedule start times that favor the Central and Eastern time zones, since these zones not only comprise 80% of the country’s population, but 73% of Major League Baseball teams.  It’s true that a West Coast series like in 1989 could make things challenging.  But I argue that even a 7:30 EST start time wouldn’t be catastrophic for this scenario.   Networks would still get to attract most of the country’s population, and a 4:30 local start time in the West isn’t as debilitating as it might have been years ago.  Internet access could allow working people to follow the games for the first few innings before returning home, kids would already be out of school, and most working adults could tune in live by the third inning or so.  TiVo and the like could be employed as well, and although fast-forwarding through commercials isn’t what Fox wants, it’s probably better than losing the East Coast entirely.

3)      Start weekend games earlier.  Why not take a cue from football and start the games at 6:30 EST like in recent Super Bowls?  True, the World Series isn’t the event that the Super Bowl is, but starting games an hour and half later certainly isn’t going to help turn it into one.

Folks who disagree with me will likely talk demographics, and how advertising dollars need to target the right audience.  I get this.  But will there even be an audience in 15 years if today’s children haven’t the ability to watch the games?

Sometimes a short-term loss is a long-term gain.

The True Sign of Aging: Smarter Kids

As the parent of two sixteen year-olds, I recognize that my perceived IQ is going to plummet precipitously over the next five years or so, only to rebound nicely in time for my daughters’ graduations from college.  This, I can accept, primarily because it’s temporary and because I’ll end up looking pretty good in the end.

I can also accept that I recently had to purchase my first pair of reading glasses and that the suit I purchased in 1993 is becoming tight in the mid-section. 

What I can’t accept is the true sign of aging: having kids that are far smarter than I am or ever will be.  And this has nothing to do with grades and tests.  Sure, both of my daughters did better on their practice ACTS than I did on my actual exam, but they’ve also taken classes that begin with the words “honors” and “AP,” and they tend to engage in activities such as completing assignments and studying.  Well, sure, anyone can do well on his ACT if he prepares for it.  Where’s the challenge in that?

No, the true sign of my kids’ superior intelligence was exhibited on Labor Day, when my family got together with friends and agreed to play a game of Pictionary – children vs. adults.  I am humbled and ashamed to reveal that my opponents were three-quarters of the way through the board before my team reached the first square!  We managed to shrink the margin of defeat before our kids completed their victory dance, but in truth, the adults – to borrow President Obama’s description of the 2010 midterm election – took a shellacking

Yes, I drew a Christmas tree about as well as my daughter did, but that didn’t help my team guess any quicker.  And my game partner learned that drawing nothing to help us guess the word “nothing,” wasn’t as successful as drawing something and then drawing a line through it, as our opponents did.  Even my 11 year-old son, who I would hope to be lagging somewhat on the intelligence front, portrayed “time zone” perfectly, sketching the Earth, drawing vertical lines through it, and then adding a clock for good measure. 

That’s right.  My sixth grader successfully drew “time zone.”  My team couldn’t even get “yield sign.”

Which is why from now on, I’m going to exercise my superiority over my children the only way I know how: ping-pong.