MidLifeMama writes:

Hi. Long time reader, first time writer. (Well, as long as you have been writing the blog.)  Anywho, my son is 18 months old and in day care full time, 5 days a week. So he gets lots of socialization and interaction with other kids during the week. While I know that as he gets older he will express a desire to play with, or not play with other kids, but right now he doesn't really play with other kids on the weekend. I don't make an effort to organize play dates etc. and he is an only child. I don't think he is suffering for the lack of it, and I recall wanting down time in the evenings and weekends myself as a kid because I often found school fun but exhausting. Is it okay to give him his down time with no scheduled kid interactions for the time being? 

BusyDad 

Great question, MidlifeMama. Because I feel completely qualified to answer it! My son Fury is an only child. He’s been going to day care/school full time since he was 11 months old, since both my wife and I work full time. He’s six now. His first real playdate? About 6 months ago. You have nothing to worry about. 

Up until his first playdate, Fury never played with other kids on the weekends. My friends are mostly single, and the few who have kids, have kids much younger than my son. And I think it actually worked out to his advantage. In school, he had the constant peer interaction he needed to grow up socially well adjusted. On weekends, he nurtured his independent side. Of course I played the role of his weekend buddy, but there were times when he’d spend hours on end playing with Legos, action figures and whatnot by himself. Quite happily. 

The fact that I know he doesn’t need other people in order to stay entertained, but upon being let loose in a playground can recruit a posse of stick wielding Jedi Knights within 10 minutes says to me that we did something right here. Eventually, as his likes and dislikes become more defined, he’ll start to gravitate toward certain people. That’s when he’ll start asking for playdates. Until he asks, though, don’t fret it. Enjoy the down time while you can.

Mr Lady:

I certainly hope it is okay, Midlife Mama.  Because if it's not, Mr Lady is going straight to bad mom hell.  Um, I don't think my kids have EVER had "scheduled" social time.  EVER.  I have never once joined a "playgroup" and most of our fun time with other kids consists of the neighbor kids banging down the door until I let them in and let them play Wii feed them milk & cookies and read them The Dictionary.  My kids didn't go to daycare or preschool and didn't hang out with many other kids until school started.  They just hung out with whomever was closest.  Thanks to that, they found themselves a really awesome godfather who lived next door and thought they were cute enough to play legos with when they were little.  I love that my kids can hang out with adults OR peers and know how to handle themselves in both situations.

My older kids are 10 and 8, so their social life is really on their own terms now.  Now, we sort of have to schedule playdates (which is a word I'm not even allowed to say in front of my husband; he feels the same way I do about scheduling fun, maybe more so!)  I do have a 2 year old, and she does have some little friends that live close, and when she gets up in the morning and says, I See C & L or Isobel, well, we go see C & L or Isobel.  We don't really plan it; we just let it happen.

I would tell you that the downtime is not only okay, it's CRUCIAL.  I am really really against over-regulating and over-booking kids lives.  Schedules, I think, are for school and sports and chores and dinner time.  I don't think fun time should be scheduled, and I don't think friendships should be forced.  If you are working during the day, you especially desevere to call night time for yourself!  Enjoy your baby, enjoy your family.  You are allowed to schedule yourself in, rememeber?

Dean writes:

My question would be: Why do some people think that it is their job to tell you how to raise your child?

BusyDad:

Dean, two factors are at play here:

1. You don’t need any special certification or permit to have a child.

2. Children are amazingly resilient and can survive almost anything.

When you combine the two, any parent who has a child who breathes on their own suddenly becomes an expert on child-rearing (this site is living proof of that). Making it worse is the fact that there really are no right answers when it comes to how to raise a child. If there were, would we need entire sections of bookstores devoted to the subject? Everything in this arena is debatable. And since everyone’s an expert, you pretty much can’t escape the debate, which manifests itself as butting into every little thing you do with your kid.

Also, you are a man. Men are viewed as well-meaning, but bumbling caretakers, especially when it comes to little ones. Yes, it is insulting when someone judges our skills as parents based on our gender, but sometimes I think we forget that we brought this upon ourselves. By “we” I mean our gender, not you and I specifically. Ours is truly the first generation to have fathers who do anything besides hold family meetings, hand out allowance, say “run along now," and ruffle our kid’s hair. You just can’t undo that in one generation. It takes time and a lot of icky bodily fluids on our collective neckties to reverse.

My advice is don’t let it get under your skin. Women have had to deal with stereotypes too. It’s simply our turn on this one. And just as we get turned off by angry militant women, they probably get turned off by angry militant “hey, I’m just as much a parent” dads. Just roll with it. Things have a way of working themselves out.

Mr Lady:

Hmm. Tough one. I can't speak for guys, but women do this ALL the time. We compare diaper brands and flash cards and TV time and discipline tools and strollers. Wow, do we ever compare strollers. Why? Because women in general are competitive, snotty bitches who think that we are the only people on Earth who could possibly know how to keep a child alive, and it makes us feel better to point out your flaws because we are invested in our children, and have learned the ropes, and want to share our insights with you to make your job easier. Raising children is hard, and I believe that the Village Philosophy is an inherent trait in parents.  So, while I can't give you any solid advice on why they do it, I can give you some tips on how to identify and deal with at least the women...

There are three kinds of women advice givers. The first is the I've Tried it All and It ALL Has Failed Woman. The realist. The PRACTICAL advice giver. She'll be the one with three kids hanging off of her, who (looks like she) has been doing this crap for far too long, who will tell you that the Target diapers aren't quite as good as the Huggies but hot damn, the Safeway diaper cream sure does rock the Kasbah. She will smile and nod when you give your baby an ice cream cone, because god knows she's been there and realized a decade ago that a little cow's milk isn't going to kill that kid. She will also very gently remind you that honey on a binkie may, if fact, kill that kid, but she'll totally understand that you have been crammed to the rafters with information and doesn't fault you for not knowing that. She will, more often than not, have a shooter of Jameson in her diaper bag (or tucked in her bra if she's too frazzled to find her diaper bag already) for you to dip that binkie in once you've washed all the honey off. She will always have an opinion, and some bit of advice, but she's not militant about it, you know?  You can usually shut her up by offering to watch her kids while she takes the shower she is probably in desperate need of.  Or while she goes off to buy some patchouli.

The second kind is the, well, what is the word? The Stick Up Her Ass woman? The one that will walk up to your child in the grocery and ask her if she's lost, even though you are standing less than five feet from that child and watching her. Intently. The one who will roll her eyes at you when you buy the apples that aren't organic. The one who thinks it is Child Abuse to let your kid paint without a smock on, or eat ice cream, or watch anything other than Baby Einstein. The one with two kids dressed head to toe in Oilily who will say something tragically condescending to you as you wait in line for something, in a pathetic attempt to bestow some profound knowledge upon you, because you see, she has TWO kids and is therefore the World's Leading Authority on child rearing. She has no baby weight left. She goes to all the "right playgroups." Laughing in her general direction doesn't help matters, but it sorta makes you feel better.

The third type is the One Track Woman. There is something she believes in, and she believes in it so very strongly that there is no chance of ever having a rational conversation with her about anything else. It always comes back to that thing. "Why, isn't it a lovely day? Spring sure is great, isn't it?" "Yes, spring would surely be a lot more enjoyable for your child if he was wearing organic, cotton, undyed, whole wheat cloth diapers." "Did you see the news today? Obama might just get the nomination after all!" "And if only Hillary's mother had breastfed her for 8 years, maybe she would have instead."  Feined sincerity is the only avenue I have found that works here.  Agree.  Nod and agree.  Say something about Free Trade.  You should walk away unscathed.

Jeremy at Discovering Dad wrote in with our very first question.  Thanks for taking it easy on us, Jeremy! 

One of the common themes I hear among dad bloggers is that they don't really hang out with other dads very much.  Why do you think that is?

Mr Lady: 

Well, Jeremy, that's a good question. My answer? No idea.

In my experience, I have found that most of the dads I know are much better at making "Me" time than moms are. Dads seem to get it that you can't be a parent 99.99% of the time, and that it's important to have friends who golf, or play WoW, or whatever. That's great, but the downside is that dads don't have the community moms do. We tend to do the opposite; ditching our kidless friends and living at playgrounds and in playgroups. We forget who we are in exchange for being part of the group.

I would also guess that there is a stigma attached to a bunch of guys hanging out with other guys talking about diapers and first steps and stuff. I could be wrong, but it seems to me like dads don't really have anywhere to start here. Take Joeprah, for example. He tries to go to the playgroups and be involved, but it's all women and they tend to exclude him just because he's a guy. It just seems to me like we give good lip service to wanting dads to step up and be more involved, but don't exactly help them along the way.

* * * * *

Jeremy, are you using the term “dad bloggers” to specifically mean dads who blog, or are you taking the word of dad bloggers to represent the collective sentiment of dads in general? Because each one leads to a very different answer. To be safe, I’ll answer to both.

Dad bloggers: Dad bloggers don’t know many dads. In my short time as one, I’ve discovered that a lot of dad bloggers started blogging because they simply had no one to reach out to in real life. Their single friends were not interested in my their latest Lego fiasco, and their own dads were cut from an entirely different mold. So in short, it’s purely situational.

Dads in general: I think dads hang out with other dads quite a bit. Just not as Dads. Couple reasons for this. First, being a father is an incidental title that they earned passively because their wife gave birth. Like Mr Lady said, motherhood is far more salient for moms. It’s a rite of passage, a pillar around which to bond.

Guys will sooner seek a buddy who likes to golf than a buddy who also has a 6-year old. That’s why you don’t see dads meeting up with other dads for playdates. It’s plain awkward for the average male—like we’re trying to fulfill our “be progressive” quota. Last week I brought a canvas tote bag to Whole Foods, this week, um, playdate with Bill. Plus, the word itself. Playdate? Shudder. I can swing a playdate with a mom, but I can’t even say that word to another guy.

Getting dads together with their kids in tow would be a great thing. I’m sure Dad bloggers have always been on board by our very nature (we do define ourselves by our kids). But to get your average Joe Dad on the bandwagon, step one would be changing the terminology.

So, who wants to Herd-Up this weekend at Dave & Buster’s?