DADWAGON

On Monday morning, the DadWagon Idea Generation Complex (funded by DARPA) sent around an article written by a New York psychiatrist, Richard Friedman, about how many of his “intelligent and articulate” patients were quite inexplicably burdened with children who were simply bad people.

For Christopher, who blogged about the article that afternoon, the piece unearthed some deep-seated fears that despite his best efforts, the cosmic forces may deliver him a child who is incurably a brat or worse. This is, I think, a completely rational fear. Christopher, Friedman, and I would all agree that nature trumps nurture. My wife is a doctor; one of her half-brothers is sitting in prison, as he has for most of his adult life.

What I disagree with, somewhat vehemently, is the entire tone of Friedman’s piece. He is continually complicit in his patients’ astonishment that despite, as in one case he described, the fact that the patient sent her children to a raft of child psychiatrists, and that the child “tested in the intellectually superior range,” this child was still a little shit.

His sympathies with another patient were even more extreme:

Another patient told me about his son, now 35, who despite his many advantages was short-tempered and rude to his parents — refusing to return their phone calls and e-mail, even when his mother was gravely ill.

“We have racked our brains trying to figure why our son treats us this way,” he told me. “We don’t know what we did to deserve this.”

Apparently very little, as far as I could tell.

I’m no shrink-hating Scientologist, but methinks this psychiatrist may have his head up his ass. Bad kids must be hardwired, he argues, because otherwise these fine, intelligent, wealthy people who pay each week to lie on an analyst’s couch would produce wonderful children. I would suggest something else: perhaps the navel-gazing, entitlement, and self-pity evident in his patients does not make for great parenting. They could still have good kids or bad kids (again, I believe those things are somewhat beyond our control). But in no way should they feel any more entitled to great kids because they themselves are posh and psychoanalyzed.

I don’t have any answers, but I do believe that acceptance of my children for who they are will be a big part of maintaining successful relationships with them. That notion–that everything is the way it is, and our only choice is whether to accept it or struggle vainly against it–is one of the more attractive elements I saw in the Landmark Forum, a personal-transformation course I’m researching for an article. It is a large part of their mantra, and would be a valuable lesson for Friedman to impart to his kvetchy, whingeing patients. Except that Friedman doesn’t even understand that lesson himself.

Anita Renfroe, because it’s funny (and a slow news day so far):

And if anyone has any idea who Anita Renfroe is, lemme know.

I clearly have too much DadWagon on the brain, because last night–twelve hours before even starting to write this Tantrum–I dreamt that my wife and I were about to have a third child. It wasn’t exactly a nightmare, per se, but it was a sweaty, busy dream in which I think my main disposition was one of resignation.

I am not a dream-reader, nor a Freudian. It seems clear that if I was not happy about a third child in my subconscious life, then I wouldn’t be happy in my waking life either. Should I have another kid? No.

Not that I have codified that decision with a vasectomy like Jason at DadCentric did (although he and I agreed on the principle of it in a DadLabs video).

But who cares what I think about my own life? Much better to offer the kind of unsolicited advice that Theodore loves so much to the two remaining DadWagoners who have just one child.  Matt, Christopher: have another fricking kid, OK? I know Matt is concerned about wiping two asses at once, but really it’s not a big deal. We even found that having a younger brother helped Dalia progress more quickly through the difficult developmental stages. As soon as there was a real infant in the house, she stopped acting like an infant (for the most part) herself. She literally began speaking the week we brought Nico home from the hospital. As if she thought she had to up her game in response to the new competition.

I also saw in Matt’s post (to sum it up: nothing against another kid, but now’s not the right time), the same kind of grumbly equivocation that kept my wife and I from starting a family until we’d been together for more than 10 years. It was never the right time, we didn’t have enough money, we had too much work to do. After we actually had the kid, we realized that our qualms were all needless: you have a kid and you make it work. Same with the second kid. It’s never the right time, until it’s too late. So my challenge to Matt and Christopher: Have a second kid soon. If it really does turn out to have been the wrong time, I’ll buy you a beer. That’s right, a free cup of beer. Domestic, though–no Leffe for you.

Here’s the other thing that’s true:  I have no idea what I’m talking about. Just as Matt is thinking of spacing his kids four years apart because that’s how he and his siblings are spaced, I just wanted to have two kids, two years apart, because that’s how I grew up. And what I choose to remember from my childhood is that my older brother was (and remains) my best friend. That he was a father to me even at times, and I might well be dead if it weren’t for him. Literally: I accidentally cut my wrist open, halfway to my elbow, on a broken window when I was 12 or so, and he, all of 14, manned up, washed and wrapped the rather terrifying wound, made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, mopped up the blood, and arranged to get me to the hospital. He’s a bit of a hero.

What I choose to forget about being one of two boys spaced two years apart is that when we weren’t saving each others lives, we were trying to kill each other. There was so much competition and seething rage that we at times had to live on different coasts just to cool off (a living arrangement made possible through the glories of divorce).

So the question of how many kids is answered according to the same logic that drives most of my parenting: it should either be done exactly the same as it was in my childhood, or absolutely different. On this question, I vote for same. Two kids, two years apart: ideal.

I’m not going to get into the 40 flavors of cultural weirdness implicit in the video below (for that you’ll have to read my book), and yes, none of our children are old enough (and some aren’t Jewish enough) to be writing songs about bar mitzvah gifts. And yet…this is the my kind of crime against music, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy.