January 6th, 2015. As a Dad, I think I’ve picked up some pretty useful skills to assist with managing a zoo, er, um, house with three kids. Firstly: Secret vision. This is the keen ability to be focusing on one thing, while still monitoring the movements of any child in the room out of the corners of your eyes. A good example of this is when I’m in the kitchen, working on dinner and notice The Bear walking out of the hallway, and of course, leaves the door wide open (which is still surprising considering the amount of times I tell him to close it) and just so casually say “Bear, door,” and the door is closed and I haven’t missed a single slice of the potatoes. This is also helpful when one of the boys tries to sneak up on me, which they are TERRIBLE at, and I can grab them before they catch me off-guard. Secondly: Painful hearing. This is the ability to instantly tell, based on the pitch, length and volume of one of my kids screams if they are actually hurt and require help, or if it’s just one of those ‘I’m not really hurt that bad, but if I make this noise I might get some attention’ type of screams. This is usually assisted with lightning fast ‘incident math’ which is the ability to estimate with extreme precision the cause of said injury based on any number of astoundingly frustrating things the kids have done during the day and being able to determine if they’ve hurt themselves due to their inability to listen when you’ve warned them not to do something. Both of these were put to good use today. Just before The Wife left for the gym this arvo, The Bear and RJ were doing what they do best, jumping on one another as part of a ‘game’ until someone gets hurt. This can be done in any number of places, while still managing to perform other tasks. Like RJ watching TV while sitting on The Bear’s head while he’s playing with his mine craft toys. If you’ve got boys, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And of course, The Bear gets hurt. Rather than getting mad at RJ, The Wife dishes out the generic; “If The Bear does that to you, and you get hurt, that’ll serve you right, RJ.” The Bear gets over it, and life goes on. Time passes. Then, I’m sitting on the couch in the lounge room, reading a comic while Mealie K is watching Dora (again, seriously???), and using my keen ‘Secret vision’ I can see that the roles of the boys has reversed, and now it’s The Bear who’s doing the sitting, which is basically just setting a one-minute countdown till there’s tears. So I wait. And sure enough, there it is, a scream from the other room. Definitely not a ‘OH MY GOD THERE’S BONE STICKING OUT’ level scream, just a ‘someone touched me with the force of ten slow-falling feathers’ kind of scream, which is more or less RJ’s trademark response to pain. So I wait. There’s no further screams, which either means he’s in serious pain, or he’s just slowing making his way out to me. The ‘incident math’ kicks in, and I’m 90% sure he’s actually fine and just coming out to me to whinge about The Bear. So I wait. DING! DING! DING! He’s RJ, rubbing his head complaining that The Bear sat on him, and now he’s hurt. Ever so casually, and a little smug, I respond with “And what were you doing to him earlier?” “Sitting on him.” “Right. So what have you learnt?” “Not to.” “That’s right.” A little rub on the head, and he’s off on his way. Dad skills at their best. But, my favourite Dad skill at the moment, is what I like to call the ‘Omega-level response,’ which is when I answer a question in such a way that the conversation stops immediately and no further explanation is required. This is commonly used when asked such as questions like; “Why do you get to have two cokes at dinner?” “Why do you get to stay up late?” “How did you know where I was hiding?” The answer is always...”because I’m Dad.” Survived another day, and didn’t emotionally scar anyone. GET YOUR DAD ON!
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 09:29:56 +0000
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