All Grown Up…

The bittersweet moment when

you realize your children

are not children

anymore.

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Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Children, Free Verse

All Grown Up…

The bittersweet moment when

you realize your children

are not children

anymore.

****************

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Children, Free Verse http://ift.tt/1KoX4DI

My Two…

My Two…

Children…

As a side note… he is almost 23 and she (the one in the blanket) just turned 20.

Yep.. time bombs… both of them.

Songing

I’ve been writing poetry for a very long time. Mind you, none of it is really all that good, at least not in my opinion. Add to that fact that I have this really weird way of creating songs out of nothing (a trait my wife calls ‘songing’ (yeah, I don’t get it either)), and you end up with this weird mish-mash of strange songs that get song (way out of tune) to the melodies I hear on the radio or tv.

Except for this one time.

I’m not sure when it happened, but it was sometime around my daughter being about 3 years old. She was a ball of fire, always on the go, always quietly planning to do something. That was one of her scary traits. With our son, we always knew he was doing something wrong because he would make a ton of noise doing it. Our daughter however, when she got quiet… you could almost guarantee she had some nefarious plot she had cooked up and was in the midst of trying to take over the world.

Sleep, sleep was something I am sure she deemed for the weak. We could always tell when she was tired because she would wind up, get very chatty, then take a breath and pass out. But I digress into the memories.

As I was saying about the badly tuned singing, I would periodically come up with some stupid silly song and it would just become the song for the moment. I once rewrote the Barney song when my son decided that crying was how he was going to accomplish getting sympathy. It went something like this:

I’m okay, you’re okay

Lets all have a happy day

No more crying, no more fuss,

Lets not be a grumpy gus.

Okay, it went exactly like that (I was trying to save my own dignity, at least what little I think I have left), and as I said, not the greatest (but what do you expect, I seriously made this up on the spot that day). To this day, when one of our children decides that pouting is the answer, it is not uncommon for my wife (or I) to break out in this song just to torment them. Parenting privileges, am I right?

The reason I say all that is because there is one song that has stuck with me since my daughter was about 3 (yep, I’m finally getting back to that part of the story.. rabbit trail much?). She was dressed up in a cute little jean dress, she had her hair up in a ponytail, white sandals and she was just raring to go. For some reason, that just hit me as inspiration, and I imagined her all grown up, and I came up with a little song. No, I won’t record myself singing it, as I do believe that would classify me as a distributor of a weapon of mass eardrum destruction, so for now, the world is safe. However, it has a country feel to the tune and the lyrics go like this:

Blue jean dress and her sandals on,

Hair up in a ponytail and she was gone,

Turning heads all around,

Breaking hearts across the town.

With hair of gold and eyes like the sea,

I just wish that she could be,

If only for just one more day,

Daddy’s little girl.

Needless to say, I was singing that in my head as I typed it up. I’d give you the tune, but unfortunately I am not gifted with such ability (my children however probably could). Years later (or maybe months, it’s all timey-whimey) I wrote a few more verses or chorus or… I don’t know.. lines? I don’t recall them, but they are written down somewhere in one of the many books I started using to write my stuff down.

So, I think I am done embarrassing myself today… but rest assured, there have been many other songs I have made up, none of which you will most likely ever hear (be thankful), and I’m sure as I grow older and grandchildren become part of my life, there will be many more silly songs with Lar… Todd.

Oh, the torture those children will suffer from my voice.

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Truth Tactics

My children… the two that are biologically claimable by me… hate that I have this innate ability to get the truth out of them. Oh, sure, they will tell you that I am not always right or that they have been able to lie to me, but just remember, that is from their perspective. From mine, it tends to be more the matter of whether or not I allow them to know that I know, or I feign ignorance to lull them into a false sense of security just to see how far they will go.

I have developed several tactics over the course of my parentage to them and I feel ok sharing this with you because they are both over 18 at this point and, well, they have gotten to the point where their need to lie to me is only outweighed by their realization that it is only detrimental to them in the long run, because, honestly, I’m going to find out anyway.

One of my tactics is something I learned from the most nefarious group of individuals to ever grace the planet. I am talking about none other than lawyers. Yes, that special breed of liar that goes to school to learn to lie even more and then gets tested on how well they lie, only to get paid to lie then lie about what they did so they can lie to you about what they are charging you. But… I digress.

What is that tactic?

Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer too!

Yep, pretty straight forward. Granted, I took it to another level with my children. I would ask them a question I knew the answer too, not to catch them in lying, but to learn how they responded to a question when they lied. Did they look around, did they fidget, did they play with their fingers. All those become important clues to learn as you raise your children. I believe in poker they call them tells. What a wonderful way of putting it, because when you learn them, your children’s tells will tell on them.

Another tactic that I employ is to:

Ask in a way that they have to tell the truth

Ok, this one might be a bit more on the manipulative side, but, hey, you’re a parent, so you need as much help as you can get. Right? But basically, with this one, you start with something like, “So, why would your teacher call me about you today?” Notice, and it’s very important in this part, I never lied to my children. No, their teacher didn’t call, but I never said they did. You can phrase any question you have for them in such a manner if you just put a little thought into it, and in the end, they will spill their beans about what they did and why they put paste in little Mary’s hair.

The last tactic I would employ was:

Mess with them. Hard!

That’s right. Mess with them. Keep them guessing. You’re a parent, you should have fun with this, it is your right as the person/s who brought this small being into existence. On top of that, you only really get 18 years to mess with them like this, might as well make the best of it. How I would do this is I would sit across the table from my children, look them in the eye then demand they give me their hands. Once I had them, I would hold their arms and put my fingers on their pulse, look them in the eye and ask them a question. Now, it’s important to already have gotten a good baseline read on when they are lying from the first tactic, and it also doesn’t hurt to utilize the second tactic here either. In the end, your kids will think you are some kind of human lie detector and will be afraid to even think about lying to you.

(yes, I got this from “Meet the Parents”, I do a pretty good DeNiro if I do say so myself, which I just did)

In the end, if you use these three tactics with your children, you will have them saying such great quotes as “No, I’m not holding your hands again.”, “You are just weird, why do you do this to me in front of my friends?”, “Seriously, you have never caught me in a lie.” or my favorite, “You’re an idiot.”

But, I know. And I know that they know that I know. And that they know that I know that they know that… ehhh.. how many was that?

Just remember, whatever tactic you use, raising kids is hard. Have a little fun with it.

Even if it is at their expense.

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