Category: discipline

Apartment Hunting, the Hard Way
18 Apr
Posted in discipline One comment

Apartment Hunting, the Hard Way

We’ve moved! Mostly.

Right now, we are in limbo at my parents in CT while I commute to Manhattan during the week and hunt for a Brooklyn apartment on the weekend. (Yup, from BK to NC and back again.) It’s stressful and exhausting and it generally sucks, for everyone except my son. He gets to spend all day with Grandma, gorging on juice boxes and cracker parties and chocolate chip cookies. He’s like a pig in shit. But he’s wiping my parents out.

To offer them a reprieve, sometimes Detective Munch comes down to NYC too. And if you thought apartment hunting in NYC was hard, try doing it with a 3yo by your side.

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Parenting Is An Experiment
14 Apr
Posted in Advice 2 comments

Parenting Is An Experiment

Over the weekend, I read a couple of parenting articles in The New York Times.

It was some intense reading full of hardcore facts and figures and suggestions and techniques, and I came away from it thinking that I have no idea what I’m doing as a parent. Which is totally cool, because I already knew that. It helped to discover that, judging by the articles, no one else knows what they’re doing either.

But thank God I don’t believe in parenting experts because even if I did, I have no idea how I’d be expected to even remember all the so-called “best” techniques, let alone have the wherewithal and discipline to implement them. Nor would I necessarily want to.

Parenting is an experiment, but our kids shouldn’t be test subjects.

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Good Cop/Bad Cop
25 Mar
Posted in discipline 2 comments

Good Cop/Bad Cop

I’m used to my son preferring my wife. I’m okay with it. It has its perks. Besides, young boys often favor their mothers. It’s biology.

It’s not like my kid and I aren’t close. Yesterday I pretended to eat his face and this morning he told me he doesn’t like it when I breathe. We’re buds!

But as we navigate the threenage wasteland, Mom and Buried and I often have to resort to some good cop/bad cop parenting, which is pretty typical. Unfortunately I’m usually the bad cop.

No wonder he likes Mommy better.

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The Happiness Problem
20 Mar
Posted in discipline 5 comments

The Happiness Problem

My son turned three and half the other day. My wife threw him a little party.

Few things seem so obviously tailor-made for a Dad and Buried rant as the absurdity of half-birthdays. Unfortunately, when my wife got excited about Detective Munch’s mini-milestone, I found myself swept up in half-birthday fever myself, against my better judgment.

Despite my reservations – about spoiling the kid; about rewarding him for nothing; about the fact that his terrible threes haven’t exactly been his behavioral high-point so why the fuck should he get an extra made-up holiday right smack in the middle of it? – I helped celebrate it. Enthusiastically. We gave him a toy truck and a cupcake!

I think I’m part of the problem. I sang “Happy half-birthday” to him, for Christ’s sake.

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