You’ve probably heard before a topic I heard at church last night: that the way you think of God the Father has a lot to do with the way you think of your earthly father. Was your father neglectful? Then, until you learn better, you may think of God as distant. Did he rage? Was he violent? Then you may fear God’s wrath and fail to grasp his mercy. Etc.
As I heard this, I watched my baby boy Liam, and wondered what he would say if he were in a conversation about this, years from now.
For one thing, I need to be careful about him hearing me yell. Last night, driving with just him and me, I made a loud noise. He was in the back, but still, he went from being fussy about being in the back by himself into his hah-hah-hah I’m-so-upset-I-can’t-wait-to-take-a-breath wail. He didn’t used to react much to things outside himself; now he does — progress, but it means I have to watch out for (for example) sneezing, shouting, or other things that are too loud.
For another, I’ve already decided, when I go by the living room and he smiles and wants me to come in, I must come in for a moment at least. I don’t want him to feel unloved. And I recognize that that’s how I felt; I must not pass it on.
And this morning, I did play with him just before leaving, and kissed Marisa and left, and he cried. What’s up with that, me not waving and saying “bye-bye”? I thought he’d cry less if he didn’t notice. He thought he’d cry less if I said goodbye. He’s getting more aware. How could I be so dismissive?
I’m not. At least, I started out compliant and credulous and utterly malleable, and developed stubborness (as much as I could manage) in an environment of abuse.
Marisa never learned to be stubborn, and may God grant she never has to.
Liam more than makes up for it. We want him to learn to feed himself. (He’s got a deadline of March, or whenever #2 gets here. I do not want to be dealing with a newborn and having to put each bite into Liam’s mouth.) But his response has been, when we put a spoon in his hand, to push his arm out wide, lock his elbow, turn his face the other way, and scream!
For finger food, he has the same reaction. Pull the hand back, reject the food, object to the whole process.
So Saturday, we took a tip from Miss Donna (the helper who at one meal wouldn’t put his cup into his mouth till he touched it — and now he always reaches for it), and decided to make him eat some of his meal with both finger food in his fingers, and him holding his spoon. I prepared for a weekend battle.
I got one.
…except that(on the spoon issue) it only lasted one day. Now, you put that spoon in his hand and he pulls it into his mouth, and says, do it faster! faster! faster! As you might expect, it’s a horrific mess: rice all over the table and floor at lunch; plate thrown on the floor at dinner… well, the speech therapist said he needs to learn to play with his food! We knew it was coming.
But what I wasn’t prepared for was it working so quickly! Now we have to get him to use the spoon to pick up the food. He doesn’t
I almost can’t talk about Liam — at church, anyway — without having someone try to soothe my feelings. (No matter how happy I am.)
About 3 weeks ago he developed stranger anxiety. Although not all babies ever start freaking when a stranger is near (or picks them up), it’s a sign that they are drawing distinctions, so it’s a developmental milestone. The next week I bragged on him at church to Mrs. X. She reassured me that it was a good thing!
Well, yes.
Or, there’s Mrs. Y. She told me that before long Liam would be doing some other developmental thing.
I said, “I don’t think he will.” (It was something that doesn’t fit his personality. I don’t remember what.)
She said, brightly, “Well then he won’t!”
I knew exactly what she meant: that I should take comfort about that he would do this thing; or if I wouldn’t take that, I should take comfort that it was OK that he wouldn’t.
Then there’s Miss Z, who apologized for saying Liam might be normal in some developmental way, because that implied he might not be completely normal, and who are we to say what is normal, and maybe him having Down syndrome was no worse than our usual little foibles or petty neuroses, and –
I’ll be kind and assume this is all well meant — and point out that it’s just not helpful. If you feel the need to comfort someone, you might first check whether that someone looks distraught. And even if he does…
Let him have his sadness. Even if he didn’t need to feel it — and I sure did, those first few weeks of knowing about Liam’s Down syndrome — you couldn’t stop him. If you don’t need to be
My brother-in-law says you can tell which fathers are involved in their infants’ lives by referring to a “5-wipe diaper,” and seeing who says, “What’s that?”
I recently read a blog post on Catholic Dads that showed advice (IMHO) to the uninvolved set. In particular, let your wife make all the decisions about child care, as it’s her show; babies need nurturing, not discipline, so your expertise won’t be needed until he’s old enough to throw a tantrum and have you “play the heavy.”
With all respect to the author, who is trying to comfort a female friend whose husband is perhaps essentially absent from both baby and mother: what a sad, sad view, I thought — that my primary relationship to my son should be as a disciplinarian! that I’m a fifth wheel until it’s time to make him toe the line! What a starved, barren view of how fathers can relate to children. Supporting Mom is great — better than not supporting her! — but I think we should challenge the absent husband and father further.
I recall a time when I asked my own father, “Why weren’t you more involved with me, when I was young?” His reply was, “Well, you seemed wise enough, I didn’t think you needed me to tell you what to do.”
I take it from this that this was the old way of fathering: the primary, and almost only, thing a father can do, is to give orders.
It would make me kind of useless to someone too young to understand orders. (I’m also possibly too laissez-faire. We have a helper who was telling him, no, you can’t have milk unless you’re willing to touch the sippy-cup.
Earlier this year I wrote this for Art of Manliness, a web site for all things manly. Since the new Catholic Dads site has “Masculinity” as a category, I decided it might be relevant to our task, especially if we have sons. (Which I do — hooray!)
Some years ago I read a book (Manhood in the Making, by David Gilmore) which surveyed the concept of masculinity in civilizations all over the world. The author found that almost everywhere you went, people had the same expectations: a man should be brave, economically successful, responsible, generous, sexually capable, procreative, and sociable with other men.
I commented on this remarkable similarity of ideas (from such different people as Spaniards and New Guinea highlanders), and a friend said, “Fortunately, we’re in the modern world, so we can get rid of the whole silly idea.”
Was she right? Is manliness old-fashioned and silly, best replaced with a new post-masculine ideal, in which we don’t admire courage, procreation, or the old manly ways?
It’s an easy question to answer, isn’t it? Reverse the list of manly qualities above, and ask yourself: would the human race be better off if each man were an irresponsible, impotent, stingy coward who couldn’t hold down a job or keep a friend? We can tinker with the ideal of manhood, but throwing it out entirely would be a disaster.
But let’s look further anyway. To keep it short, let’s consider one example each from three classes of manly virtues: those that only men can do; those that either sex can do equally; and those that either can do, but are more characteristically male.
Men Only: Fatherhood
Consider where the new post-masculine man has really caught on, at least in regard to procreation: Europe, and blue-state centers like Greenwich Village — that is,
…and it’s hard not to be worried, since #1 has Down syndrome.
It is over 99% likely, based on that alone and my wife’s age, that #2 won’t. (I think God wants me to trust Him 100%, not the numbers 99%.) She’s in the middleish part of the “you ought to feel a kick” period (I think), and hasn’t yet. Pray for us.
A few weeks ago I had a discussion at church that surprised me.
They: “Those golden things the Pope has, the great works of art in the Vatican . . . they could be sold, and the money given to the poor.”
Me (and others): “Um…that’s what Judas said, about pouring perfume on Jesus’s head.”
They: “Yeah, but that was Jesus.”
Me: “Aren’t those art works also meant for the glory of God?”
They: “Are they?”
Well, I hope so.
There’s something called dominion theology. I don’t know much about it, or even what it is exactly, but it does have a bit about the end of the world coming not when things go to hell and Jesus intervenes, but when things get better due to the church’s actions. I think part of the “better” is making the world beautiful by building cathedrals (and, to be sure, by building hospitals and loving our neighbors). I don’t know if any of this is true, but I do like the perspective that we ought to be making the world a better place.
I started to wonder if “They” were right here, for different reasons. Today I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. It’s magnificent. Maybe it’s too magnificent. I went in, and it was a beehive of tourists taking photos, and those velvety cords to keep you from going where you shouldn’t, and staffers there to search your bags in case you’re a terrorist and keep you from wandering down the center aisle during the service snapping your flash.
My church back home is the sort that doesn’t even have a nave; it has a “worship space.” Its construction, like that of your house, is flimsy. Nobody’s going to come interrupt our services to take pictures of our statues. Unless we
By Will on September 26th, 2009 | Category: Parenting
During Liam’s Prednisone days in June, we stopped giving him a bottle, because he was already eating enough to make him look like Winston Churchill. He got nursing, and solid food.
Now, he’s forgotten bottles. Bottles, sippy cups* (conventional and with the big rubbery nipples), travel mugs . . . they’re all instruments of torture as far has he’s concerned. It’s impossible to swallow while screaming — this much I’m sure of.
Here’s what we’ve tried so far:
giving it to him when he’s hungry (screams result) and when he’s not (he doesn’t scream, but he doesn’t suck, either)
letting him play with it as a toy. He does put it in his mouth like he would any other toy, but he doesn’t suck
changing the action on the nipple, to make it give milk easily, or with more stinginess
putting syrup on the nipple. He thought the taste was interesting, but he didn’t suck
putting apple juice instead of milk; breast milk instead of cow’s milk; sweetening the milk
putting oatmeal powder in the milk, so it’s thicker and may be easier not to choke on
a little tube from a syringe with milk — the way we fed him when he was newborn
We haven’t tried denying him nursing until he accepts the bottle, but babies aren’t always rational; he might get dehydrated before he’d take the sippy cup.
The reason it’s an issue is twofold: he’s not getting enough from Marisa (by pediatrician’s guidelines, at least); and she needs him to get less — his lower teeth have erupted, and he bites.
Does anybody know how to get him to drink?
*Down syndrome babies aren’t supposed to have sippy cups; their nipples push the mouth in a way that could inhibit learning speech. But our pediatricians says, it wouldn’t hurt to have him on it for a short time, just
Liam’s first birthday, as you might imagine, had presents, and those presents often came in bags with bright colored paper.
Forget the presents: Liam wanted the paper. It was bright, and easy to wave, and made lots of noise. He rolled all over the floor waving it and ripping it and leaving a trail of blue strands. When I picked him up, he kept on waving it. His expression said, “Poppa, help! I can’t stop!”
We’ve let him play with paper a lot since. (For one thing, it’s safer than cords, which he’d go for in a heartbeat if we let him.)
On the other hand, we have one toy that was so great it even beat out paper.
Seriously, this was a smart idea: a ball that’s all holes, so it’s almost hard not to grab it if you touch it. It’s called an “Oball.” Our PT says she gives one to every 1-year-old she knows, whether they need PT or not.
Thus we head off the ugly prospect of an intervention: “Liam, this is how your paper use has affected my life” — look at the picture on the right.
“And if you don’t ease up on the paper, I’m going to post a video on YouTube so everyone can see what it’s like when you get happy and excited.”
I started to wonder if “They” were right here, for different reasons. Today I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. It’s magnificent. Maybe it’s too magnificent. I went in, and it was a beehive of tourists taking photos, and those velvety cords to keep you from going where you shouldn’t, and staffers there to search your bags in case you’re a terrorist and keep you from wandering down the center aisle during the service snapping your flash.
Liam’s first birthday, as you might imagine, had presents, and those presents often came in bags with bright colored paper.
Forget the presents: Liam wanted the paper. It was bright, and easy to wave, and made lots of noise. He rolled all over the floor waving it and ripping it and leaving a trail of blue strands. When I picked him up, he kept on waving it. His expression said, “Poppa, help! I can’t stop!”
which he’d go for in a heartbeat if we let him.)
Seriously, this was a smart idea: a ball that’s all holes, so it’s almost hard not to grab it if you touch it. It’s called an “Oball.” Our PT says she gives one to every 1-year-old she knows, whether they need PT or not.
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