Nest is never quite empty

I was digging around in a file cabinet in my home office when I found a cowboy tucked into one corner of a drawer. He's quite the frontiersman, armed with a rifle, a pistol and a knife, and crouched in a kneeling position perfect for sniping.

Been a long time since our sons -- ages 21 and nearly 19 -- played with little plastic cowboys. Wonder how long that cowboy has been waiting in that drawer for someone to rescue him?

You can't tell it from my stellar cellphone photography, but the cowboy is pretty detailed, with windswept bandana, fringed shirt and the words, on his base, "Made in China."

I'm keeping him on my desk, a reminder that my sons are never as far away as they seem.

Crowing from the (almost) empty nest

You know what I haven't been doing lately? Back-to-school shopping. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Our youngest started this week at Shasta College, but he didn't need any new school supplies or clothes. He had a pen, and he wore his usual hippie rags. We threw some money at him as he headed out the door, and that was about it. He stays at our house some nights, but that's temporary. He's pretty much on his own.

As most of you know, Kel and I are trying to take advantage of our emptier nest by selling our beautiful home in Redding, CA. (Price reduced to $400,000! For slide show, click here.) As soon as the house sells, we're moving to a place by the beach in Santa Cruz. Why? Here's why:

(I don't know the photographer, but he's got lots of awesome aerials at his website. Check it out.)

But enough gloating. For you poor souls who still have kids in school, check out the Home Front archives for a few laughs, including this column about back-to-school shopping. Enjoy!

Boys will be chefs

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a young boy playing with his new train set, his baseball glove and his toy kitchen.

That’s right. Kitchen. As in junior-sized appliances, where the lad can pretend to cook and do dishes.

According to an article from The Associated Press, boys increasingly are playing “chef” with toy kitchens, even though the thought of it can make uptight fathers dash out into the yard and roll in the flowerbeds.

Many modern dads are OK with their sons playing with toy kitchens, the article said, partly because the dads themselves spend more time in the real kitchen. Boys see their fathers whipping up dinner, or they see male chefs on the many food shows on TV, and they want to emulate those activities. Toy companies are catering (ha!) to that interest by making gender-neutral kitchens for kids, the article said.

“Men are reshaping and rethinking their roles,” said Dr. Michael Kaplan, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center. “They are doing much more (cooking and housework) than they ever have.”

Kaplan said boys shouldn’t be discouraged from playing with toys usually associated with girls because it can lead to self-esteem problems.

That’s where he lost me. I’m a living, breathing example of a man who played with a toy kitchen, over his father’s objections, and, as anyone who knows me will tell you, “self-esteem” is the least of my problems. Just the opposite, in fact.

My toy kitchen was a little turquoise-colored number -- a stove, a sink and a refrigerator with food items and condiments painted on the inside -- where I whiled away many hours making mud pies that I insisted all the grown-ups actually eat.

I was 4 years old at the time, which would’ve made it around 1961. Not an era when men spent much time in the kitchen.

I vaguely recall my dad expressing concern over his firstborn son spending so much time baking mud pies and what that might do to my developing male psyche. At least I think that’s what he was saying as he rolled in the flowerbeds.

Clearly, everything turned out fine, as I grew up to be a housewife. Kidding! I grew up to be a work-at-home dad, who doesn’t mind spending time in the kitchen. Still not much of a chef, but at least I don’t serve up mud pies anymore.

Today’s toymakers can appease all the worried dads and still make a buck off the toy kitchen market. It’s simply a matter of tailoring the appliances to men.

For instance, toy kitchens for boys shouldn’t come in colors like pink or turquoise that might “feminize” them. They should be made of stainless steel. Like a DeLorean.

Manufacturers could make macho dads happy by designing a toy fridge that holds nothing but beer. For the garage.

Microwave ovens didn’t exist when I was a child, but now we can’t get along without them. Every boy’s kitchen should come with a microwave, preferably one that can actually make live cats explode. (Kidding some more! Take it easy, cat-lovers. Sheesh.)

Even the most manly man thinks it’s OK to cook outdoors. Most will, in fact, hip-check their wives away from the barbecue grill so they can char their own steaks.

If toymakers want to make a really authentic barbecue grill, they should rig it up with a 10-foot-tall blaze that will singe off hair and eyebrows. Then Junior can look just like Dad.

To extinguish the flames, they can roll in the flowerbeds together.

Pool talk

My 20-year-old son: "I saw what you wrote online about me and my friends using the swimming pool. 'Hippie soup.' Ha-ha. Very funny."

Me: "After you guys left, the pool was like a mud wrestling pit, full of filth and cooties and vermin."

Son: "Yeah, right."

Me: "I had to give it double chlorine! Had to kill off all those youthful hormones!"

Son: "Hormones?"

Me: "You can't leave those untreated. If you do, your swimming pool might rise up during the night and come in the house and hump you."

Son: "You are so weird."

Woodstock?

I look out the patio windows and there in our relatively small in-ground pool is our oldest son, the wandering minstrel with the blond dreadlocks, and five of his equally filthy freak-flag-flying friends, swimming and splashing and having the time of their lives.

I turned to my wife and said, "Hippie soup."

Ho-ho-ho, Merry August

Back-to-school shopping always seems like a summertime taste of Christmas.

Such a haul. New clothes, new sneakers, new backpack, new lunchbox. Bright yellow pencils and crisp white paper.

For the kids, it's as if Santa came to visit in his vacation clothes. For the parents, though, it can be a nail-biting, heartburn-inducing exercise in breaking the bank.

Small kids demand that all clothes and school supplies come decorated with trademarked characters from Marvel or Mattel or Disney or Nintendo. No matter which character your child loves best, all the goods bearing that likeness sold out last February.

If parents try to inflict anything else -- plain T-shirts, for example, or a notebook decorated with Barney instead of Pikachu -- the children will roll on the floor and howl and kick their little feet.
It's easy to spot those kids' parents. They're the nomads wandering from store to store, weeping and clutching handfuls of their own hair.

If you're lucky enough to stumble upon a hoard of the correct goods, the sticker shock will make your eyes jump out of your head and roll around the floor. Ten bucks for a binder? Thirty bucks for little bitty jeans? Sixty dollars for sneakers?

Holy slide rule, Batman. Before you know it, you've racked up a credit card debt that won't be paid off until the little beggars are off to college.

And for what? Clothes the children will ruin or outgrow by winter break. School supplies that will be lost or destroyed. (Has any kid, anywhere, ever made it through the school year with an intact protractor?) A backpack that produces an odd, musty smell you can't eradicate. And, of course, after a month or two, the kids will decide Pokemon is passe (or so all the parents pray).

By the time Christmas does roll around, it's time to replace everything. And it's hard to fit a new NASCAR lunchbox in a stocking.

I'd like to say it gets easier as kids get older, but that would be lying. Fashions change, but the demands are much the same. Instead of screaming for a pink Barbie lunchbox, your daughter will insist on a pink Paris Hilton crop top. Your son will object to any pants that aren't large enough to house a family of six.

And the sneakers just keep getting pricier.

Some parents of teens simply hand over a credit card and lie down in a dimly lit room until it's over. Others participate in the shopping, but must budget for stress remedies such as bourbon.

There is hope. Eventually, the kids' growth slows, so they might wear a garment more than, say, twice. The household fills up with so many backpacks and lunchboxes and binders, a child might actually re-use one, assuming it doesn't smell too funky.

Our two teen-age sons show little interest in back-to-school shopping. The older one, who's in the seventh year of his ratty rock-and-roller phase, refuses to wear clothes unless they have more holes than a screen door. The younger one never throws anything out, so his closet is overflowing. They both own relatively new, stink-free backpacks.

So I left the boys at home when I did the back-to-school shopping. I returned with a sackful of composition books and pens and said, "Here you go. You're all set."

I know it's not over. Teachers will demand specialized goods. Backpacks will be lost. Tattered clothing will turn to dust.

But I'm hoping we can hold out until Christmas.

Advice for Father's Day

This Father’s Day, let’s remember the best of all parental admonitions: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Sure, that sounds hypocritical (especially to smart-aleck kids who think they know everything), but it’s really the only way for dads to approach parenting.

Fathers are deluged with advice about setting good examples for our children. We’re told that we’re role models, that we should have no bad habits, or at least should keep them carefully concealed. Otherwise, the children will grow up to be just as messed up as we are.

This puts a lot of pressure on guys. Good behavior goes against our nature. If you don’t believe me, check out any group of guys watching the Super Bowl together. Men quickly devolve into hooting primitives when they’re not observed by those who might disapprove, particularly if violent sports, beer and/or cheerleaders are involved.

This bad behavior can be overlooked when men are young, single and free-spirited. The very word “bachelor” comes from the Latin root for “keg party.” Which explains the origin of the “bachelor’s degree” on college campuses.

But once we become dads, we’re expected to chuck all our bad habits and behave. Especially if the kids are watching. And they’re ALWAYS watching, even when you think they’re asleep.

Let’s say, for example, that you smoke cigarettes. Your children will hold this against you. They will nag you to stop, complain about the smell and leave you newspaper clippings about the health hazards. Even if you only smoke outside when the children are asleep in a location miles away, they’ll still nail you. They will wear you down until you quit smoking, even if it takes years.

As soon as you’ve adjusted to the idea that you’re no longer a smoker, the kids will take up the habit. Guaranteed.

Why? Because you were their role model and you misbehaved. Plus, they know it’ll drive you crazy.

No matter that you told them all along that they shouldn’t smoke. No matter that you said all the right things. They’ll do as you do, not as you say, because it’s the shortest route to the Asylum for Insane Parents.

The whole say/do conundrum is even worse for fathers like me, who work at home. For more than a decade, I was the one who spent the most time with our two sons, ferrying them to school and overseeing homework, while my wife brought home the bacon. If our sons had a role model, I was it, which explains a lot about how they turned out.

No matter what I say to our teens, they call my bluff because they’ve seen how I’ve behaved over the years.

I’ve told them they should get jobs and dress nicer and think about careers. But how can I expect them to take me seriously when, for most of their lives, they’ve seen me working at home in my pajamas?

Why should they have a regular job, the argument goes, when dad doesn’t have one? Why should they go the suit-and-tie route when their barefoot father takes great pride in the fact he hasn’t worn a necktie in a dozen years? And a boss, what’s that about?

I’ve set a bad example. If only the boys had listened to me instead of watching me. As it is, they’re in danger of becoming work-at-home types themselves. Which translates to “poor.” Who will look after me in my old age?

On the other hand, no one will give me a necktie for Father’s Day. How can I be sure? Because I said so.

Quaran-teen

We parents wear many hats and dutifully accept the chores assigned to each, but the one I enjoy least is labeled “jailer.”

Sometimes, the only way to get a child’s attention is to place him/her under house arrest. Grounded. All privileges suspended. Cut off from the world.

Grounding is an onerous punishment, particularly for teen-agers, whose whole world revolves around social scenes and questionable friends. But it’s also pretty onerous for the parents because we’re required to enforce it. Which means we’re stuck in jail, too.

Usually, I have no problem with hanging around the house. It’s where I work, as well as where I do all my important lifestyle activities, such as reading and eating chocolate. But when staying at home is required, I get as itchy as the grounded offspring.

Last year, my wife and I played jailer for two full months, following several school transgressions by our then-16-year-old son. To make sure he understood the gravity of the situation, we went to full-scale house arrest. No social contacts, no leaving the property, no fun. We took away his cell phone. We disconnected his Internet. We found many, many work projects to keep him busy.

To his credit, he was a model prisoner, doing chores without complaint and only occasionally trying to wheedle out of his long sentence. But there were antsy periods, when being cooped up was nearly more than he could bear. (Three oblique animal references in one sentence; I believe that is a trifecta.)

I could tell when confinement was getting to him because he would play a mournful harmonica and drag his metal cup on the bars. (Kidding!) Instead, he’d start pestering me, joking around, poking and prodding, until I’d hit him with my nightstick. (Kidding again!) Usually, I’d play along, in our traditional Three Stooges-slapfight-dishtowel-popping mode, because I was going stir-crazy, too.

Unlike him, I could get away occasionally. Run some errands. Go to the library. Catch a matinee. But one or the other parent had to stay close, so our inmate wouldn’t start hatching escape plans or tunneling under the yard.

The one exception to his confinement was driving lessons. I don’t even try to wear the hat that says “driving instructor.” My wife is in charge of teaching the kids to drive. I’m too nervous. Even with an experienced driver, I’m a terrible passenger, gasping and stomping the floorboard until I’m ordered out of the car on the side of the road.

Ours son’s transgressions also required me to spend many hours in my “senior lecturer” hat, one I’m particularly well-equipped to wear. No one can outtalk me. I gab on and on, slowly wearing down the children, until they can hear my voice in their sleep. If that’s not a deterrent, I don’t know what is.

I’ve retired my “chef” hat during the warm weather, but there are still plenty of parental hats to wear: chauffeur, repairman, laundryman, nurse, pool boy, sunscreen enforcer and TV remote operator.

And let’s not forget “probation officer.” That hat's still hanging around, in case somebody decides to try on “repeat offender.”

The Aging of Aquarius

According to the calendar, I’m getting happier every day.

The mirror tells me I’m well on my way to contentment. If you believe my white whiskers, I’m downright delirious.

I base these conclusions on a study that shows that people tend to be happier as they get older.

The University of Chicago research project, led by a sociologist named Yang Yang (really), involved periodic interviews with 28,000 people between 1972 and 2004. Overall happiness levels tended to go up and down with good and bad economic times, but older Americans always reported being the happiest age group.

“The good news is that with age comes happiness,” Yang told The Associated Press. “Life gets better in one’s perception as one ages.”

Older people typically have learned to be content with what life has given them, Yang said. In general, the study found, the odds of being happy rose 5 percent with every 10 years of age.

Most Americans reported being “very happy” or “pretty happy” at every age. But a third of those aged 88 reported feeling very happy, compared to only 24 percent of 18-year-olds, the study said.

(What’s most amazing is that researchers found any 18-year-olds who admitted they were “very happy.” I assume the respondents were drunk.)

A separate University of Chicago study found that one reason people in their golden years tend to be happier is that they’re more socially active.

That study found that 75 percent of people aged 57 to 85 engage in one or more social activities each week. Such activities include visiting with neighbors, attending religious services, volunteering or going to group meetings, the AP article said.

Those in their 80s were twice as likely as those in their 50s to do at least one of those activities, the study found.

That’s because people in their 50s (like me) are too danged busy to keep up social connections as we should. Between careers, household chores, family responsibilities and Facebook, we find we’re pretty much booked solid.

Yang’s study found that baby boomers were the least happy group. Naturally. Many of us boomers are still in that stressful mid-life period, and we’ve generally been a bunch of whiners since the get-go.

Researchers say baby boomers haven’t learned to lower our expectations as we get older. We still want it all, even in retirement, and we’re not into the whole growing-old-gracefully thing. This attitude explains many boomer foibles, including annual gym memberships, plastic surgery, “working vacations” and Viagra.

Unless we learn to let go of our achievement-oriented mindsets and accept that life will never be perfect, the researchers said, we boomers could end up as sad, lonely senior citizens. There’s a happy thought.

I plan to embrace getting older. I’ll practice being content. I’ll tamp down my ambitions and try to accept life as it comes. I’ll drive slower and go to bed earlier. I’ll stop throwing away those “invitations” to join AARP.

Most of all, I plan to develop some social connections. I’ll have to rearrange my schedule, but I think I can free up an hour on Thursday afternoons.

Look out, happiness, here I come.

Sleepless at the sleepover

Ah, to bed. At last. Another long day, made all the longer by a teen-age son’s sleepover party.

I can still hear the boys in there, snickering and whispering. Winding down from their video-game/sugar buzzes and the random hormone surges that make them howl and punch each other. They seemed to have a great time this evening. Eventually, they’ll fall asleep.

I lay awake, listening, and thinking how sleepover parties are different now.

When they were little, sleepovers were high adventure, full of separation anxiety, trepidation and tears. We needed mule trains to haul the emotional baggage from one household to another. Not to mention changes of clothes, special treats, a blankie, a stuffed toy and one favorite plastic action figure doomed to never turn up again.

We parents regularly delivered all this stuff to another household and handed our children over to strange adults who, for all we knew, were members of a blood cult. But, hey, it’s good for the kids to socialize. And we parents always were desperate for a night off.

Not that it’s ever the whole night off. Because the host parents call at 2 a.m., saying the visiting child is scared, sick or otherwise sleepless and needs a ride home. Guaranteed.

It gets easier in the middle-school years. The kids can pack their own bags, for one thing. And they stay busy with electronic gizmos: video games, CDs, DVDs, I-Pods, cell phones, the microwave oven. The job of the host parents becomes a long night of “Turn that off and go to bed,” but that’s better than cleaning up barf.

Now that they’re older, my boys have friends sleep over all the time, mostly so they can stay up very late on weekends, playing Guitar Hero II. These days, preparation for the sleepover is virtually zero. The guests show up without so much as a toothbrush. They eat whatever they can forage in the fridge. They sleep on the carpet like dogs, if they sleep at all. Sometimes, I wonder if their parents even know where they are. And if other homeowners regularly find unfamiliar 16-year-olds eating Cocoa Puffs in their kitchens at 3 a.m.

Our sleepover visitors always seem polite enough. Sloppy and hyperactive and endlessly hungry, but polite. Hmm. Maybe they’re covering up something with those good manners.

As I lie awake, I start thinking how I don’t really know these teen-agers that well. Maybe the good manners are a ruse. Maybe they’re really felons or firebugs. Maybe they’re “casing the joint,” trying to determine where we hide our valuables. Haha, fooled them, we don’t have any valuables. But still.

Charles Manson probably attended sleepovers at other kids’ homes. Did those host parents wonder about him? Maybe they recognized him later on the news, and said, “Look, it’s Charlie. I always knew that kid was a little helter-skelter.”

The more I think about the potential danger of teen-aged strangers in my home, the more restless I become. By the time I put on my bathrobe and tiptoe down the hall, I’m expecting to find anything, up to and including the sacrificing of a goat.

I peek into my son’s room, and the boys are sound asleep. At peace. Like angels from heaven, if angels slept on the floor and wore baggy jeans and had funny haircuts. Teen angels.

I go back to bed, smiling over my silly anxieties. And lay awake until dawn.

Table manners for boys

One of our favorite pastimes is eating out, and our two sons have grown up in restaurants. To them, fine dining is no big deal.

These days, it’s rare for all four of us to dine out together. Our boys are on the go with their friends around the clock, and they’re way too busy to spend time in places where there’s no actual skateboarding or Guitar Hero II. Plus, they’re teen-agers and therefore can withstand the presence of their parents for only so many ticking minutes before their heads explode.

Once in a while we lure them out on the town with us, often using pasta as bait, and it’s always a treat to watch them handle themselves well in a restaurant, dealing with waiters and minding their manners.

At times like those, a parent can tear an elbow ligament trying to pat himself on the back, but it’s a good idea to put that fork down first.

Recently, my wife and I had such an outing with our young son. (Where was the older one? I don’t know. I believe he said, “Out.”) We showed up at a nice Italian joint in time for the sunset special, our son bobbing along beside us to a music only he can hear. His long hair hid his face, his posture was a question mark, and he wore an AC/DC “devil horns” T-shirt over pants that looked as if they’d been gnawed away at the knees by attack beavers. The usual.

As soon as we were seated, Mr. Scruffy became Mr. Savoir Faire, ordering with aplomb and using the correct fork and making only one brief joke with the napkin before putting it in his lap where it belonged. He participated in the conversation, didn’t dip his hair in his food, and generally was as pleasant a dinner companion as a person could desire, if that person didn’t mind picking up the tab.

So different from the way I’d see him a few hours later, slumped on the carpet in front of the TV, hooting at “Family Guy” and spooning sticky mint ice cream directly out of the carton.

Both versions are the direct result of his upbringing. From the time our sons were babies, they were drilled in “restaurant behavior.” Things were relaxed at home, where they might be able to get away with certain violations, such as that never-stale sabertooth joke with the asparagus spears. But such behavior doesn’t fly in restaurants.

Yes, it’s a double standard, and yes, it’s probably not the best way to rear children. Strict disciplinarians would argue that manners should be perfect at every meal, but those people are too uptight to enjoy a fine meal anyway, and should just eat tidy pellets like hamsters.

My wife and I were determined to keep dining out, even when the kids were small and couldn’t get through a single meal without knocking over at least one king-sized beverage. We were the only family at the diner where the adults were the ones wearing rubber pants.

Every time, as we entered, the kids got a little lecture about “restaurant behavior,” a reminder to use our best manners while sharing the establishment with other diners, including some who do not want to play “seafood.”

These excursions were stressful, of course, but gradually the lessons took, and on a few occasions, perfect strangers stopped by our table to remark on how quiet and well-behaved our boys were. This usually made us parents burst into tears.

Our answer, then, now and always: “You should see them at home.”

Singing the parenting blues

The dramas of the ancient Greeks often featured a chorus that stood off to one side, commenting on the actions of the lead players, bemoaning mistakes and foretelling disasters.

This chorus parallels the modern lifestyle known as “parenting.”

We parents watch from the sidelines as our children make boneheaded decisions and rush headlong into dangerous situations, and all we can do is sing out warnings. The children are the stars of the show, and they’ll make their own mistakes, no matter how loudly we parents sing the blues.

Many of these songs are standards, the same ones our parents sang to us: “Go to Sleep, Little Baby” and “Don’t Put That in Your Mouth” and “What Do You Mean (You’ve Lost Your Shoes)?”

Others are situation-specific: “No Monsters Under the Bed” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand (When We Cross the Street)” and “O, Brother, Where Art Thou Sister’s Barbies?”

Then there are the novelty tunes, the unintentionally comic songs blurted in the heat of the moment: “Don’t Pet That End of the Dog” or “Three Coins Up Your Nostril” and “That’s Not a Helmet, That’s a Bra.”

Some parental laments make no sense. I’ll never forget, when I was about 12, as I worked up my courage to swing on a rope into the local swimming hole, my mother sang out: “If You Swing Off There and Kill Yourself, Don’t Come Crying to Me.”

We parents change our tunes as the children grow older. When they’re babies, we coo lullabyes and delight in their grossest activities and sing their praises for having a full set of toes. Our hit parade consists of “My Baby’s Cuter than Yours” and “Cry Me a River“ and “Spit-up Rag” and “Ooh, That Smell.”

When they reach the toddler stage and go mobile, the warnings begin in earnest: “Don’t Go Out of the Backyard, Dear, With Anyone Else But Me” and “Put That Down, It’s Nasty” and “Electric Shocks Are No Fun” and “(On Everything) Germs, Germs, Germs.”

Then it’s off to kindergarten, and we parents moan all the louder because the children are out of sight, and we hope our many admonitions echo inside their darling heads. Many songs of this era come in the form of questions or pleas: “Did You Go?” and “One More Bite?” and “Oh, Dirty Boy (the Bath, the Bath is Calling)” and that old favorite, “Hurry Up, We’re Late, It Doesn’t Matter If You Have Your Superman Underwear.”

The school years reinforce the notion that we parents have less control over our offspring all the time. “If Johnny Jumped Off a Cliff,” we sing, and “Don’t Bite the Teacher” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Arm?” and “A Lost Lunchbox and a Pink Consternation.”

The parental chorus grows frantic in the teen years, as we try to squeeze last-minute warnings into unheeding ears: “This Ain’t No Party” and “You Call that Music?” and “Get a Job” and “One Tattoo’s Too Many For Me.”

Finally, the kids leave the nest (“Bye-bye, Birdie”) and strike off on their own (“Save Your Knowledge for College” or “You’re in the Army Now”), and we parents can finally stop singing and sit in the wings, quietly worrying instead.

One day, our children will have kids of their own, and they’ll start singing the parenting blues themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I plan to say, “Don’t come crying to me.”

Nightlife ain't no good life

For people without children, the word “nightlife” conjures images of drinking and dancing, nightclubs and roadhouses, flirtation and funk.

To parents, “nightlife” means “sleep.”

We parents remember fondly the child-free nights of our youth, when parties didn’t end until dawn. Even after we were married, we went out regularly with our spouses and/or friends to enjoy movies and dancing and candlelit dinners.

Then a baby arrived, and its cat-like mewling might as well have been the shrieking of brakes. Screeeeech, nightlife’s over.

We still were up all night, but parenthood changed everything. Instead of donning our finest threads, we changed diapers. Instead of icing down beers, we warmed up formula. Two a.m. was no longer “closing time.” It was time for a “feeding.”

Oh, we tried to have a social life. We took our offspring out in public, only to be greeted with glares when they spilled or howled or hurled silverware. We hired sitters, only to find that we were too tired to do much with our nights of freedom.

Sleep grew more valuable than a few hours’ fun. Dancing and fine dining became activities for vacations or special occasions. Even then, we might gladly swap a special night out for a full night’s sleep, depending on how much croup and colic our household suffered lately.

Take heart, parents. It gets easier. Once everybody’s sleeping through the night, you might have enough energy to go two-stepping. As the kids get older, it’s easier to find a babysitter (if no easier to pay for one). Eventually, the children are old enough to be left at home alone for a few hours.

The drawback to this progression is that, by the time parents can go out again, we have too much accumulated fatigue to enjoy it. It’s easier to stay home, watch TV, order a pizza.

When we force ourselves to venture out, we find that nightlife has passed us by. All the hot spots have changed; that favorite honky-tonk is now a vegan juice bar. Everything costs a lot more than we remember. The music is unfamiliar, and seems too loud. We’ve forgotten how to boogie. We need a refresher course in partying.

Here, then, is the Parents’ Guide to Nightlife:

• Nothing fun happens until after your usual bedtime.
  
• Nobody says “disco” anymore.
  
• When it comes to drinking, it’s important to remember that you’re older now and out of practice. If you have too many, you’ll be punished the next morning by the one-two punch of a wicked hangover and “Doodlebops” blaring from the TV.
  
• Don’t test the temperature of your drink on the inside of your wrist.
  
• “Karaoke” is Japanese for “show me the nearest exit, please.”
  
• No matter how hot it might be outside, never wear short pants to a cowboy bar.
  
• “Hip-hop” is not a character on “Sesame Street.”
  
• If you feel that people are staring at you on the dance floor, you’re probably right.
  
• It’s always wrong to tell your dinner date, “Here comes the choo-choo.”
  
• No bibs.
  
• Other adults aren’t amused when you make a bunny out of a napkin.
  
• Having a designated driver is not a license to act a fool.
  
• “Tequila” is Spanish for “regret."
  
• When your spouse says, “It’s time to go,” you should immediately stop drinking, take the necktie off your head and leave the dance floor.
  
• Let your spouse sleep late the next morning. You’ll need that quiet time to think up some apologies.
  

Exemplary work

All parents worry about setting a good example for their children, and it isn't always easy.

Children are watchful little rascals, and they have impeccable timing. Do something you've cautioned them against -- drinking directly from the milk carton, for instance -- and they will walk in on you in mid-guzzle. Guaranteed. If you drop a brick on your foot, and unleash a string of curses, you can bet your child will be within earshot. If you're drunkenly watching porn late at night, long after they should be asleep -- well, you get the idea.

Being a parent is more than not getting caught engaging in bad habits, however. It's also teaching good behavior to the kids. Personal hygiene, for instance. Good study habits. Using one's blinker. Avoiding a life of crime.

One important area is teaching them how to work. We want our kids to become responsible, job-holding adults, so they can afford high-quality elder care for us in years to come.

We teach our kids to work by showing them how we work hard ourselves, and that’s where I’ve got a problem.

I spent more than twenty years toiling at newspapers, but our two sons barely remember those days. What they know is that Dad has survived the past decade by pecking away at a home computer, doing household chores and sponging off their hard-working Mom. Sure, Dad has written a whole shelf full of books, and he travels a lot and gives lectures and his columns have appeared in newspapers all over, but the boys don't register all that. What they see is a grown man who has no job.

To them, that's a role model to emulate.

Our younger son came home from school to find me pounding the keyboard, trying to meet a deadline. He didn't notice the frantic nature of the work. What he noted was that I was still in my pajamas.

"You never got dressed today?" he asked.

I muttered something about how I hadn't showered, either.

"That's a good day right there!" he crowed, and he sounded exactly like me.

Egging 'em on

Across America, the "morning scramble" is not a breakfast dish. It's the mad dash to get the kids out the door to school.

In a fit of blind optimism, parents start each day with the notion that everyone in the family will be on schedule, and we won't have to race around crazily at the last minute. Each school day, we hopeful parents watch those expectations dashed.

As is the case with so many things, the children hold an opposing viewpoint. The children do not care if they are late. They're not thrilled about spending the day in school anyway. They maintain that they would happily live forever as uneducated goatherds if they could be allowed to sleep for only five more minutes. Thus it begins. Every day.

Once they're up, younger children tend to wander off. Teens are too busy text-messaging their friends to actually get ready for school. Sleepy kids of any age seem to have difficulty with the question, "Where are your shoes?"

When our two sons were small, the culprit was distraction. They'd forget they were supposed to be, say, rounding up socks that weren't crunchy. Instead, I would find them watching cartoons, or barefoot in the yard with the dog. Or dressing in a ninja costume, "just to try it out," five minutes before departure to school.

And there was always a last-second disaster of some sort. I spilled my milk. I can't find my homework. The dog won't give me my shoe. We'd scramble about, solving crises, until the last possible moment, then zoom out the door, trying to reach school before the final bell, weaving through traffic like an ambulance on Saturday night.

Now that they're older, our boys require only minimal overseeing. The struggle is at the front end -- getting them out of bed -- rather than forcing breakfast down their gullets or locating their missing science project. It goes like this:

5:45 a.m.
Mom: "Good morning! Time to get up. Here comes the light! Get up!"
5:55 a.m.
Dad: "Good morning! Rise and shine there, boys!"
6 a.m.
Mom: "You guys must get up now. You're going to be late."
6:10 a.m.
Dad: "Hey, come on. What's the matter with you? Did you stay up all night?"
6:15 a.m.
Dad: "Get. Up. Now."
6:20 a.m.
Mom: "I'm coming back here in two minutes with a pitcher of ice water. Whoever's still in bed gets it."
6:30 a.m.
Boys reel around house, yawning and sniffling, wolfing food and throwing on the rags that pass for their clothes. Mom and Dad nervously hound them with questions -- "Did you brush your teeth?" or "You call that breakfast?" or "Is that the way you WANT your hair to look?" -- all the way out the door.

One day, as younger son sprinted to his room to fetch something he'd forgotten, the older one waited by the front door. A veteran of years of racing off to school, he gave his parents a wry smile and said, "We were almost on time today."

As a hopeful parent, I thought: There's always tomorrow.

Racing the clock

"Greetings, Agent Parent. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to finish a major work project, complete with Power Point presentation, while also driving kids to music lessons and the dog to the vet. Pick up dinner somewhere and have it on the table by the time your weary spouse gets home. Spend three hours overseeing homework, washing dishes and resolving disputes before falling into bed, exhausted. This Palm Pilot will self-destruct in 10 seconds."

(Cue theme music: "Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Tweedle-dee. Tweedle-dum. You're late!")

Modern life has become "Mission Impossible." Working parents can't make a move without synchronizing our watches -- or, at least, our calendars -- and most days are filled to the brim.

To meet all our daily appointments, we need organizational skills and coordination and communication. We share responsibilities with our "team," assembled for their special abilities -- spouse, coworkers, carpoolers, cleaning lady, yard guy, babysitter, travel agent, in-laws. We schedule everything down to the exact minute.

And still we find ourselves zooming through traffic at the last possible second, turning a routine trip to the orthodontist into an action-movie driving sequence.

(That maniac you saw in traffic today? The one who nearly mowed you down with a minivan while trying to simultaneously drive, talk on the phone and discipline children in the back seat? Five will get you 10 they were late for soccer practice.)

Most of us have demanding jobs, chock-full of appointments and sales meetings and other time-wasters, and we speed through them so we have time left to do actual work. Quitting time gets pushed back, later and later, until it sometimes seems simpler to set up a cot in the workplace.

Things don't settle down once we finally do shake free; just the opposite. Our children have too many activities, all of which require transportation, typically all the way across town. We need family time and exercise time and laundry time and a few hours' sleep and, please, oh, please, just a few minutes to collect ourselves. Because tomorrow we do it all over again.

Everything must go like clockwork. Throw in a dental appointment or a flat tire or a special homework project or -- gulp! -- an unexpected business trip, and it all goes kablooey. Work goes unfinished. Dinner is forgotten. Children are left waiting at curbs, collecting resentment they can reveal to their psychiatrists years from now.

Families coordinate these impossible missions in different ways. Some use a universal calendar, where everyone in the family gets to note appointments and events. Others do everything electronically, sending e-mails and instant messages with constant updates (this technique has the added benefit of allowing family members to avoid each other). Some skip planning altogether, rushing around willy-nilly, everybody late all the time, until the parents keel over with heart attacks and the children become wards of the state.

At our house, we use a combination of methods. A technophobe, I use an actual paper calendar, where I write cryptic little notes to keep track of everything. My wife tracks everything by computer. Once a week, we synchronize our calendars.

Is our system working? Let's put it this way: If you see my minivan hurtling through traffic, you might want to drive up onto the nearest sidewalk where it's safe. Because here's what playing on my car stereo: "Dum-dum. Da-dum…"

Horseplay U.

"College prep" means something completely different for teen-age boys.

Sure, boys need the same preparation as girls when it comes to academics and ambition. But they also need something more, and they get it from their dads.

This came to mind recently as my wife and I watched our two teen-aged sons chase around the kitchen, popping one another with damp dishtowels. My wife said to me, "You've prepared them well for life in a dorm."

I felt so proud.

The past generation or two have represented a grand social experiment, with dads taking on more of the child-rearing responsibilities. These days, millions of kids (including mine) grow up with dads who work at home. Who knows how these kids will turn out?

Most dads didn't grow up focused on the idea that we'd someday care for rugrats. We didn't necessarily learn the skills to be good parents. We assumed our wives would take care of all that.

Babies arrived, and we found ourselves adrift in an ocean of bottle formula and amoxicillin and dirty diapers. That's enough to send most men screaming back to the nearest traditional workplace, but some of us continued to stay home, only to find that toddlers can effortlessly cause insanity in others.

The school years are pretty much the same for all parents. We work like crazy, trying to keep the little beggars in groceries and clothes, then spend whatever time is left on nurturing and housework and driving to soccer games. The only difference for us stay-at-home types is that it's usually easier for us to structure our workday around orthodontist appointments.

Overall, the Dad Experiment is working. Our houses may be dirtier, our kids may be wilder, and more meals originate in the microwave, but we manage, week to week, to keep the household healthy and intact.

If fathers excel in one area, that's in the horseplay department. When you have a dad who's home all the time, horseplay rules.

When the kids are both boys, as at our house, well, let's just have a moment of silence for poor mom. She's been outnumbered since the get-go. She's forced to act as the one sane person in a loony bin of rambunctious males.

When the kids were little, my wife smiled serenely while they sat on my back and I galloped around the room on all fours. She kept that look frozen on her face as the kids and I wrestled on the hardwood floor. She sighed as we played "monster," chasing through the house, crashing into walls and leaping over furniture.

As they got older, our horseplay grew up, too. Slap fights and tickle torture and insulting patter and armpit noises and water balloons and booby traps. When mom's not around to moderate this testosterone madhouse, we males quickly devolve into The Three Stooges. It's a wonder we don't spend more time at the emergency room.

Other dads teach their kids to fish or fix cars or shoot free throws. I've taught mine how to wield a towel in locker room fights. Our boys both pop a mean towel, and I've got the welts to prove it. The sacrifices we make for our children…

When our sons go off to college, they'll have the skills necessary for dorm life. They can hold their own when towel fights erupt. They know how to use a microwave and a toilet plunger. They know how to play poker (so your kids better hold tight to that tuition money). They can short-sheet a bed. They know more insults than Don Rickles.

I've done my daddy duty. Nyuk-nyuk.

When laundry goes bad

Every family needs a balanced division of labor.

Each household has many tasks that must be done regularly, and it's only fair that spouses divvy them up, according to time and ability and personal preference. Once kids reach a certain age, many chores can be dumped on them, but it still should be equitable. That's the democratic ideal.

A pivotal moment in my marriage came early on, when my wife and I made the following pact: She would pay the bills and do the household paperwork, and I would do all the laundry.

This was an ideal division of labor, pegged to ability (she's a whiz at organization; I can't do math) as well as personal preference (she hates laundry). I quickly found that laundry was something I could accomplish while watching sports on TV. Like I said, it was ideal.

Things change, of course. Once we had babies, I started wondering if I was getting a raw deal. The amount of laundry quadrupled and I found myself trying to fold, oh, 700 of those little "onesies" every week.

But household paperwork got more complicated, too. Mortgages and escrow accounts and insurance premiums and stock options and credit card statements and other math-related stuff I don't even pretend to understand.

The laundry load got somewhat easier after our sons passed the diapers-and-urp stage of their development. When they hit their teens. (Kidding!)

As the boys got older, I required them to round up their own dirty clothes. I wasn't about to prowl their filthy rooms in search of crunchy socks and moldy towels. If they wanted their clothes washed, they had to bring them to the laundry room.

The flaw in that plan: They didn't care if their laundry got done. They'd happily wear the same pair of jeans day in and day out, until the pants could stand up on their own and they could just leap into them every morning. In fact, they'd think that was "cool."

It became an exercise in nagging. Eventually, the clothes would appear and I'd wash them, along with whatever crayons, loose change, gravel and live frogs happened to be in the pockets.

I was griping about this situation, and my wife asked why didn't the boys do their own laundry. I raised several objections, including a dramatic rendition of a washer overflowing with suds, right out of an episode of "I Love Lucy," but my wife persisted, and we gave the boys the bad news.

Mostly, it's worked out okay. I still nag them when it becomes abundantly clear that their clothes need washing. They, so far, have not filled the house with suds.

But I know they're cutting corners, which brings me to the Hideous Shirt.

Years ago, in preparation for an Ugly Hawaiian Shirt contest, I made a thrift-store purchase of a brown-green-and-gold psychedelic number I thought was a sure winner, but it didn't even place. Who knew how ugly those shirts could get? Whew.

My younger son rescued the Hideous Shirt from the trash, pronounced it "cool" and took it to his room. He never wears it, but it regularly shows up in the laundry.

I know how this happens. After the requisite nagging, he does a clean sweep, picking up all clothes, dirty or clean, and throwing them in the washer. I watch the never-worn Hideous Shirt cycle through the laundry, and I chew my lips over the inefficiency and waste.

At least the boys aren't trying to balance the checkbook. Imagine how hideous that would be.

It's Santa's fault

If your children aren't getting the education they deserve, then blame Santa Claus.

That's right, it's because of jolly old St. Nick. And the holiday shopping season. And the Pilgrims. And whoever devised the calendar we currently use.

Educational experts regularly moan about the state of our schools, saying our children are falling behind their competitors in other nations. Such economics-fueled worries have led the federal government to develop many expensive programs to make schools more "accountable" for the fact that our children (and future taxpayers) are idiots.

I haven't followed the development of these programs all that carefully, but I believe the biggest one is called "No Child Left With A Behind," which has something to do with corporal punishment.

Anyway, my point (and I do have one, right here on top of my head) is that all these so-called experts overlook the biggest problem with our public schools, which is that we have a big whopping vacation set squarely in the middle of the school year.

That's right, the Christmas break, though it's called "winter break" in most places now because of assorted lawsuits. Kids get two to three weeks off from school, which is why so many working parents sing the carol: "All I Want for Christmas is Some Inexpensive Child Care."

Even those of us who work in home offices have problems with winter break. We're available to stay home with our kids, but we won't get much work done. And, naturally, here at the end of the year, we're usually facing crashing deadlines.

This leads to conflicts within the home. For instance, it's hard for the work-at-home parent to concentrate on his job during the post-Christmas period, when he has to stop every few minutes to repair cheaply mass-produced toys, or to run to the store for more batteries. Eventually, the parent will explode in frustration, which can take the shine off everyone's holiday spirit.

Parents might be able to manage if it were only two or three weeks of winter break. We could plan for that time. Set aside our work, and really enjoy our time with the children. Let the Christmas spirit warm our cockles and jingle our bells.

But no. As most parents will tell you, there's hardly any schooling going on between Halloween and New Year's. November is a big washout. The kids get long weekends for Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving. Teacher conferences cut many school days in half. And when the kids are in school, they're busy cutting turkeys out of construction paper and re-learning the annual lesson about Squanto and the Pilgrims. And that's in high school. The younger kids are still mastering crayons.

The first half of December is full of plays and recitals and Christmas pageants and basketball pep rallies and letters to Santa, rather than education. Then, faster than you can say "ho-ho-ho," the kids are home from school, with visions of Playstations dancing in their heads, erasing whatever they learned during the fall.

By the time they get back to school in January, they've forgotten everything, including Squanto and algebra and, in many cases, what gifts they received for Christmas.

Teachers are forced to review all that came before, to get the kids up to speed again. Just about the time the children have settled into a routine and are really learning -- spring break!

So next time you hear someone moaning about today's schools, blame all the holidays. And when your boss wants to know why you blew your December deadlines, say, "It's all Santa's fault."

Paying Mom what she's worth

Once, at a matinee of "Mission Impossible XXVI," we were agog as a swoopy drone aircraft fired missiles, blowing up a whole smoking causeway full of vehicles, trying to hit tiny Tom Cruise.

(They're CRUISE missiles! Get it? Huh? Here, America, let us hit you over the head with our collective wit.)

One of those strange hiccups of silence breached the Dolby SurroundSound just as an older lady behind us wearily said: "Right, and who's going to clean up that mess?"

Spoken like a veteran mom. One who's mopped up too many spills for one lifetime. One who's scolded so many sloppy teen-agers, she's tired of the sound of her own voice. A frazzled woman just happy to sit-still-for-a-change in an air-conditioned theater.

She couldn't quite relax into the moment. Actions still have consequences. Somebody's still got to clean up every mess. And, like many of us, she's worn out by the real world. One telecast disaster after another, all the bombings and tsunamis and hurricanes. And you just know, her tone said, that our tax dollars will be wasted, rebuilding the causeway that Tom Cruise blew up.

Which brings us to the cost of things.

Salary.com added up the top 10 jobs that make a mom's job description (janitor, cook, psychologist), put value to them and came up with this: Stay-at-home moms are worth $134,121 a year. Working moms would earn $85,876 for the "mom job" portion of their work, in addition to their actual salaries.

(OK, whoa, that's enough. If you are a mother, you need to stop waving this article in the faces of your loved ones. Right now. Yes, you've been telling them, all these years, how hard you work, but they're not going to start listening now. Someone could get a paper cut.)

And that's just the work that can be calculated. No one can measure all the sleepless nights and harried days of the average mom. The level of everyday worry that could take a woman to a place where she experiences automatic thoughts about the clean-up costs of computer-generated special effects at the movies.

The study didn't say anything about working dads' housework contributions or work-at-home dads or stay-at-home dads. We'll assume we dads would make a lot less if our at-home contributions were calculated. Some men do absolutely nothing (and you know who you are), and blow the curve for the rest. Even those of us who do the lion's share of the housework don't put the same amount of time and care into it that your average mom does. We tend to compact all our efforts into those frantic few moments before our wives get home.

Still, we'd be worth something. We could pro-rate it to hours spent per week on household chores (minus time spent on burrito breaks, wandering off and scratching), and come up with a pretend salary for all of us, too.

The comparisons might be embarrassing for the men. Mom's worth $85,876, on top of what she's drawing down at the rendering plant? And Dad's annual housework contribution is worth how much? Seventeen dollars?

Isn't mom in danger of pricing herself out of the imaginary market here? I mean, come on, $134,121? Who does she think she is, Halliburton?

One thing's for certain: At those prices, we can't afford to hire moms for the job of picking up after Tom Cruise. No matter how much they volunteer.