How Parenting Could Solve the Mideast Crisis

I said one piece of chocolate,
Mr. Khamenei, and that's it!

In between the news organizations’ estimates of “Omaha” counts predicted to come from Peyton Manning this weekend, you may have actually heard some real news – the US is in talks with Iran over their potential creation of nuclear bomb technology. The two sides are locked in deep negotiations. My recommendation for Secretary of State John Kerry? Try Candy. But only at the right time.

All parents know a principle that diplomats use all the time – leverage. Here it is in a nutshell: leverage is when you have an advantage over your negotiating partner. For example:

Russia: “I have a huge army and would like you to buy our oil, what do you think?”

Ukraine: “Oh yes, we certainly agree. Very fair.”

Here’s an example of leverage gone awry:

Dad: “Here, son, have some candy.”

[Child munches on candy]

Dad: “And now, since I was such a generous and loving father, I’m sure you won’t mind cleaning your room in thanks.”

Son: “Screw you, Dad!”

[Child proceeds to damage every piece of furniture in the house with a toy airplane]

Never, ever pass up an opportunity for leverage. This is a standard negotiating tactic: always get something for what you get. “Can I play Wii?” is a brilliant opportunity to extract some value.

Similarly, never give leverage when you don’t have to. Somehow, we seem to forget this lesson all the time. “You promise if I let you order dessert you’ll be good on the car ride home?” is a regular slip. “Oh yes, oh yes” the children promise “would we lie to you?” they say, winking, and you can almost see the twinkle off their gold tooth. 20 minutes later we’re screaming at them in the back seat, reminding them of their promise. Remember, guilt is not leverage. Guilt has no impact on these children.

Instead, if you’re ever in a position of having to act first on the promise of future results, remember a principle important in finance: future value discounting. Remember J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today?” No, no, no. If you buy a sofa today with cash rather than take their “pay later” deal, you should get it for less, right? Same thing with kids. Except, here’s the deal. The discount factor for that couch is probably 15%. The kids discount factor needs to be, like, 1000. So if they promise you good behavior for a day, expect maybe 10 minutes. Factor those 10 minutes into your value calculation for that ice cream they want.

Unfortunately the children have a way of creating leverage out of nothing. It’s called: whining. And they are expert at knowing how to maximize that leverage: whine in public places, loudly. Embarrass your mother in the checkout line, and some portion of the time she might actually buy that candy bar. And god is it tempting to pay off the whining. But this only reinforces the tactic. It emboldens them to whine harder and longer next time and makes it even harder to say no. Don’t let your children know this works. Never negotiate with terrorists.

I’ve written before about the amazing positive impact ofsticker charts in our home. Sticker chart something and the problem goes away almost overnight. And here’s a great thing – the prize they earn at the end of the week can still be held out for more of the behavior you want. “If you want the toy you’ve earned, you have to be good in church.” This is called extortion, and it is an important tool in the parents’ toolkit. “That’s not fair!” the children scream, and they’re right. Ignore the tugs on your conscious. Remember how fair they’ll be the next time you cut a deal.

The children are like rogue actors. They’re not rich and powerful on the household stage, so they have to use a more creative tool set to forward their agenda. And they know you are a diminished version of your former self. Sure, you have the nuclear arsenal, but you are never going to use it. You’re never going to win if this thing goes to protracted land war, but if you artfully use the tools outlined above, you can at least steer the family to a relatively stable détente.

Car Trips

Over the holiday break, Andrea, the kids and I drove to Boston. That’s right, drove. A car trip.

There’s a reason we drove. Ever since the kids passed the age of 2 years old, we’ve had to pay for a seat for them when we fly. And since Cleveland is a “hub” city for United we get all the benefits of that hub status – i.e., getting to fly to Chicago or Newark on the way to wherever we want to go (seemingly the same as non-hub cities), and paying monopoly prices for the privilege. Boston, a 90-minute flight that would probably cost us $49 a seat if Southwest ever decided to connect the two cities, becomes at a minimum a $1000 outlay on United. So we save the money and pay for it in auto miles.

Boston, according to Google Maps, is 660 miles or 10 hours from Strongsville. That’s with no stops. But of course there are stops. The kids specialize in announcing their need to go to the bathroom either 1) as we’ve completed pulling away from a rest stop or 2) as we’ve just passed a rest stop and the next one is in 54 miles. So of course we make several stops on the drive. But I will say this – Andrea, god bless her, is good at getting us in, getting the job done, and getting us out. Potty and gas stops are like 15 minutes, meal stops 30 minutes. Basically we can get to Boston in about 11 to 11 ½ hours.

Cody, whose hobby is the study of bodily functions, loves rest stops. They have “stand-up potties” (urinals), automatic hand dryers (great for sticking your head or mouth under), and motion-sensing sinks. They also have water fountains and video games and ice cream. We don’t need Disneyland; we have the Pennsylvania welcome center.

Back on the road, the kids actually aren’t too bad in the car. We have a secret weapon- a seatback entertainment system. Not the kind that’s built in – we don’t spring for the $1500 built-in system and regret it every day up to the day we buy a car when we make the same decision – instead, it’s the kind that’s held in place with straps and Velcro and a plug running down to the cigarette lighter. They fall down a lot, and the kids need a lot of help picking up the remote they can’t seem to keep off the floor, so Andrea spends a lot of time unbelted, turned around with her butt up in the air trying to fix whatever is wrong. It’s frustrating and maddening, but I will say this – my family took car trips when my sisters and I were kids and I don’t know how in the world my parents survived them without seatback DVD players, even the ones that fall down and come unplugged.

But no matter how you slice it, 11 hours is a long time – in Disney time it’s about 7 movies long. That’s a long time even for hardened electronics junkies like my kids. And although there are two screens, they can only play one movie. So Cody eventually tires of princesses and Chiara of pirates. Plus I forgot to mention the key to this whole thing – their earphones, which are the only thing that makes 11 hours of Disney movies tolerable from the front seat, begin to hurt their ears. So starting at about the 10^th hour or so, which puts you in the evening “witching hour” timeframe anyway, the whining and crying begins.

It’s a long car trip, but the last hour seems longer than the rest. On this last trip, the weather decided this would be a great time to start the driving rain, slow down traffic, and extend our trip an extra hour. Boston is in sight, tantalizing you, but you just can’t get there through the jam. It’s also now too dark to color or do anything non-electronic, so we suffer through the same 2 “Madeline” episodes, sans headphones, about 3 times each. Madeline even joins the Yankees in one of them, which just seems like the icing on the cake in our own personal Hell.

You have to stay long enough to justify the long drive – a week is about right for 11 hours. But we spend the week with conflicting emotions of 1) glad to be there, 2) wishing we were in our beds and bathrooms and considering an early departure, and 3) dreading the trip home.

KiddleDad’s Dieting Tips

Many people like to start off the year with a resolution to lose weight. We never learn. You go through the pain and agony of weight loss, show great success, look great, feel great. 18 months later we’re breaking out the fat pants again and it’s time for another diet.

Andrea’s choice for this New Year is called the “slim and sassy” diet. Those of you who know me already know I’m regarded as “slim and sassy” all too often. So, I don’t need the diet, but I’m doing a modified version on my own. My diet’s easier. And almost as effective.

Here’s some dieting tips from me to you. These are proven to be… dieting tips. They’re easy and some are effective. Either way, it doesn’t matter, you’ll yo-yo back to your old weight so you might as well follow my advice and do the easiest diet ever:

Do the first weigh-in at your heaviest: Go out for a blow-out dinner, order the porterhouse for two, drink enough beer to kill a horse. Don’t pee yet. Now it’s the perfect time for your first weigh in! Try to set a record. Maybe even wear your clothes on the scale. You’ll thank me on your next step.

First weigh-in should be at your lightest: Don’t weigh in the morning after that porterhouse meal! Diets take time, for goodness sake. Put in a good, painful day of eating nothing but celery and water. Then weigh in the next morning. BAM! you’ll have lost like 2-3 pounds. Diet’s done - tell all your friends and family what a great success it was.

In case you wanted to lose more than 2-3 pounds, this will give you that much-needed shot of motivation to get through the next 2 agonizing days.

Have one blow out meal per week: This will provide the same motivation cycle as the first week. Those porterhouse pounds from Saturday will just melt away by Monday.

Count calories: But let’s not go overboard here. That cookie doesn’t really count, does it? You wouldn’t normally eat it on this diet, after all. It’s just this once.

Here’s another calorie hint- if you eat it in several small servings, it doesn’t count. So break a corner off the cookie. Wait a while, then eat the rest. Didn’t count. See? Dieting is easy. Relatedly, if you eat something off someone else’s plate it doesn’t count either. So try to marry someone who likes fries with their burger.

Record your weigh-ins: Again, let’s not go crazy. Are you up a pound or two? Don’t write it down. Remember, we need to maintain our willpower and motivation. You’ll get that pound off after tonight’s Porterhouse.

Salt and exercise have something to do with it: This is, like, a fact. Experts have studied this somewhere. Salt and exercise influence weight loss. We’re just not sure how. One day you splurge and eat a bag of Doritos, and you lose a pound. Another day you run a half marathon, eat a cucumber and gain a half pound. How does this happen? Damned if I know, but seems like salt must have something to do with it.

Booze has nothing to do with it: At least not in my book. So drink up! I have nothing to back this up, but it’s as scientific as your silly cabbage soup diet. So leave me alone.

Listen, the long-term trend of life is towards heavier, fatter selves. Humans average like a pound of weight gain a year. I think I know why – constantly surrounded by chicken nuggets and Twizzlers by day and in desperate need of Bourbon and Ice Cream at night, there’s no question we pack on the pounds during the years of having young children.

You can’t stop fate. So do what I do – give up!  You can shovel the sand off the beach for a summer, but the tectonic plate of life is slowly pushing you into the sea. So have a Porterhouse or two and enjoy the slide.

Tubby Time

I took a breather from blogging over Christmas and New Years and took some time to read back through my posts from last year. Looking back, I was amazed to find a startling omission: Tubby Time.  I think this is because Tubby Time does not carry the acute pain of, say going to bed or getting dressed. Rather, it is a slow, dull ache that just makes you feel old.

Tubby Time is the Chipotle of child rearing. Chipotle, the burrito restaurant, is terrific – great food, reasonable price, somewhat healthy. Their barbacoa with just the right ratios of hot sauce, cheese and sour cream is a culinary feat. At one point, Andrea and I were averaging a couple of trips to Chipotle a couple of times per week. Then it happened- Burrito Burnout. Now on most days I would rather stick one of Chipotle’s plastic forks in my eye than eat one of their burritos.

Of course – of course! – Chipotle is maybe the kids one and only favorite. As in “Who wants a special treat?” “YAY CHIPOTLE!!!” And all I can think is… ugh… can’t you kids, just once, choose Flemming’s? But happy kids means happy life – or something – so we soldier on to Chipotle. I do my best to mix it up- maybe today is a bowl day or taco day or, in moments of true desperation, a salad day. I’ll have plenty of time to decide, because inevitably we choose to go to Chipotle at the same time a girls soccer tournament let out, so my kids will have a solid 30 minutes to demonstrate to the world what animals they are while we wait for 25 “not too much sour cream” and “lots of guacamole” make their way through.

So that’s what Tubby Time is like. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it – in fact, Tubby Time at one point was pretty fun- watching the kids splash and make bubble beards and be inappropriate with their privates has some heartwarming entertainment value.

But then, and this was back when we felt the need to bathe the kids every day, I hit that same Chipotle point – Total Tubby Burnout. We’ve since cut back but it hasn’t done much to my sense of dread.

The thing is, it’s not the actual bathing itself, which is a tiny fraction of the Tubby Time process. Here’s a timeline of how Tubby Time usually plays out:

30 seconds - Getting out Tubby Time stuff (towels, wash cloths, soap, shampoo), getting undressed, turning on the water

0:35 - dumping approximately half a bottle of Spider Man bubble bath stuff nowhere near the rushing water because “I want to help.”

0:40 – dumping approximately half a bottle of Hello Kitty bubble bath stuff (which, by the way, is the same exact stuff, down to the color, as spider man stuff but with a different label) because “Cody got to do it.”

5:40 – spend five minutes tweaking the faucet because it is too hot, too cold, too high or too low to get our hair wet.

5:50 – Cody BATHES FOR 10 SECONDS

10:50 – Spend five minutes begging Chiara to wash herself

11:10 – Chiara BATHES FOR 20 SECONDS (extra step – she uses conditioner)

21:10 – 10 minutes of splashing, making soap beards, and being inappropriate with genitalia

26:10 – Dad, who is now bored to tears, begs the kids to get out for five minutes. Several repeat trips to watch football ensue.

36:10 – The highly involved post-bathing process, which involves drying, brushing out hair, moisturizing skin, clipping nails, and cleaning ears. Mostly this process involves begging the kids to let you complete these steps, which in total would take about 2 minutes but sans cooperation take 10+.

46:10 – Two warm, clean, soft children are in jammies and now so amped up they won’t go to bed for weeks.

Plus, as I seem to every time, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a step. “What do you mean you forgot to clean under their fingernails?” you might as well ask me before I even begin.

Everyone has chores that, for no good reason, they like or don’t like. You may think it’s crazy not to like Tubby Time, just like I think washing dishes or emptying the trash is no big deal. But when the time comes, when there is an option to do Tubby Time or something else – like stick a fork in my eye – I’ll usually choose the alternative.