Tampa Bay dad blogger

Kids Feel Entitled? Don’t Blame a Trophy

/ Carter Gaddis / 1 Comment

Is achievement in youth sports a zero-sum activity? Your answer to that question likely will determine whether you think it’s some kind of social catastrophe for kids to receive a small, cheap, but lovely little token at the end of a youth sports season.

Here’s another question: What is the purpose of youth sports?

I believe youth sports are meant to help kids learn to socialize. After-school and weekend activities like baseball, soccer, swimming and other sports introduce kids to different experiences, a vital component of growing up. Sports give kids the chance to identify their physical, mental and emotional limits and push past them as they grow.

Most of all, youth sports are supposed to be fun.

If you believe sports is only about identifying winners and losers, then frankly, you have the wrong idea about the purpose of youth sports.

This brings me to trophies. What are trophies? A lot has been made this week about Steelers player James Harrison’s public assertion that participation awards in youth sports rob his kids of the edge they need to succeed. So, he told the world on Instagram that he is returning his kids’ participation trophies.

The implication is that a trophy only has value if it is emblematic of success in children’s games.

Historically, trophies do symbolize achievement. They symbolize excellence. They are physical reminders of the hard work and dedication put in to perform well enough to defeat the competition. Well, guess what? Those days are over. The traditional purpose of trophies has changed, at least for youth sports.

Whereas they used to give out certificates for participation, they now give out trinkets. Today’s participation trophies might also be likened to the varsity letters awarded to older kids who play at the highest level of high school sports. It’s perfectly reasonable that as kids get older – say, high school age – and begin to separate out into “competitive” and “recreational” athletes, some physical award for championships is received.

In this century, though, trophies for participants in most youth sports leagues have come to represent something else – commitment to a purpose. That’s worth commemorating, worth recognizing, as kids move toward adolescence and adulthood.

Times Have Changed

That said, I personally don’t believe it matters if a kid gets a participation trophy at the end of the season. When I was a kid, we got certificates – none of which survived for long. Many youth leagues award participation trophies today instead of certificates. So what? It’s the same message, only instead of a piece of paper it’s a trophy.

Not everyone chooses to gracefully accept this change. They think trophies should still mean today what they meant 20 or 30 years ago. They refuse to recognize that times have changed in that regard. I get it. It’s difficult to let go of tradition.

The problem I have is with parents and others who think participation trophies are somehow harmful to kids. That’s simply ludicrous. Kids are smarter than that. They deserve more credit than that.

My older son has a shelf-full of participation trophies and medals from YMCA soccer and Cal Ripken baseball. He displays them because they remind him of the friends he made and the fun he had during those seasons. He worked hard and improved every season and I see no problem with him enjoying the trophies.

We didn’t make a big deal of it when he got them. There was no, “Oh, hey! Look at that! You did SO GREAT! You get a TROPHY! Hooray for you!” Trophies or medals were just part of the end-of-season ceremonies, along with ice cream and the occasional pizza party.

I’m seeing many arguments this week from parents who scoff at the notion of a participation trophy. Great. Fine. Those parents can do their thing. But if a kid gets a kick out of receiving a shiny little trinket along with his or her ice cream cone at the end of a youth sports season, why would you want to spoil that?

It has been my experience that kids who get these trophies at the end of seasons are more excited about the ice cream. I’ve seen kids cry at the end of a season not because they didn’t win, but because they were sad that they would no longer be playing a game they love with this particular group of friends.

That’s the beauty of youth sports. The games give kids something to care about.

Don’t Blame the Trophy

I get the sense that people who object to participation trophies see them as symbolic of or contributing to an “entitlement” mentality. They associate it with the dreaded concept of “political correctness,” or consider it a symbolic recognition that mediocrity is acceptable. They seem to believe that if a kid gets an “award” simply for showing up, he or she will always believe that’s how life should be.

That’s a specious conclusion, because recognition for participation in youth sports is nothing new.

It’s just that instead of a piece of paper with a hastily-scribbled or stamped signature of some unknown league official at the bottom, kids get something a lot cooler – a trophy, or occasionally a little medal on a ribbon. A trophy is nicer than a piece of paper, but these little figurines of plastic, metal and wood one day will be discarded along with all other childhood relics.

If a kid happens to look at that shiny trinket on the shelf as he or she grows up, who knows? It just might be a reminder of the fun, the camaraderie, and other lessons learned during that season. It might even make that kid smile. Nothing wrong with that.

One thing it won’t do – it won’t turn that kid into a spoiled, entitled brat who expects to get something for nothing. If that attitude exists, parents might want to look for the cause in the mirror, rather than the trophy case.

The Fine Line Between ‘I can’t’ and ‘I can’t – yet’

/ Carter Gaddis / 2 Comments

To a second grader, grownups are magicians. We can reach stuff in the high cabinets. We can make toast. We can drive a car. We can produce endless LEGO sets out of thin air. We can do things their developing minds consider mini-miracles.

I kind of like it. Makes me feel useful and smarter than I actually am.

Our younger son got frustrated at breakfast trying to open one of those applesauce pouches. You know the kind, and come on; it’s the easiest thing on Earth to do, right? Grab the cap in one hand, hold the pouch firmly in the other hand, apply counter-clockwise pressure to the cap, and voilà! One of your oh-so-vital servings of fruit, ready to inhale at your convenience.

He could not figure it out. So, he threw it across the table and yelled, “I can’t!”

I retrieved the pouch and placed it in front of him, unopened. I bent down to his level and smiled. He crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip.

I ducked my head to look at him eye-to-eye and asked, “Can you fly a rocket ship to the moon?”

He said, “No!”

I asked, “Can you drive a car to the movies?”

He said, “No! No! No!”

I asked, “Can you ride your bike without training wheels?”

He said, “No, and I don’t want to!”

I asked, “Can you determine the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

He looked up at me and said, “What?”

Then I backed away a bit and, smiling, asked him quietly, “Can you put on a shirt by yourself?”

He uncrossed his arms and said, “Yes.”

He reached for the pouch and I gently swatted his hand away. He laughed and waited for the next question.

I asked, “Can you take a bath by yourself?”

He said, “Yes! A shower.”

I asked, “Can you go to the bathroom by yourself?”

He laughed again and said, “No!”

I looked at him sideways and he said, “OK, yes!”

Then I said, “You can’t drive a car … yet. You can’t ride a rocket to the moon … yet. You can’t ride your bike without training wheels … yet. You can’t cure cancer, or make a plan for world peace, or feed the world’s hungry, or invent a flying car. There are a lot of things you can’t do. Not yet. But that’s because you don’t have the experience you need to do those things. Your mind and body are still growing. You’re still learning. Everything is still new to you. You aren’t unable to do these things because you’re seven; your age is just a number. You are unable to do these things yet because you haven’t had the time to learn how to think, how to allow your intelligence to work on a problem until you find the solution.

“Plus,” I said, “you’re just too short to reach the cabinet.”

Then I said, “The answer you give when someone asks if you can fly to the moon is, ‘Not yet.’ ”

I asked, “Does that make sense?”

He shrugged and said, “I guess.”

“OK,” I said. “Good.”

Then I asked, “Can you open your applesauce pouch on your own?”

And he said, “No.”

Then he added, “Not yet.”

He smiled, reached for the pouch, and turned the cap with all his might.

How to Adopt a Kitten

/ Carter Gaddis / 6 Comments

One sunny day in January 1996, we decided to adopt a kitten. We drove to the Humane Society of Pinellas County to pick one out.

We found a litter of six tabby kittens just out of foster care, a furry, mewling mass squirming around their recumbent mother in a covered, elevated outdoor pen. The kittens were 10 weeks old. Our eyes and hearts picked out a brown and white longhaired female with pretty yellow eyes and a calm disposition.

Before we could adopt our kitten, we needed cat supplies. So, we left the kittens and drove to the nearest pet store to buy a litter box, food, a water dish and cat toys. We were gone for 45 minutes.

How to Adopt a Kitten

Murphy the cat, circa 1997. He was a loving, devoted companion for nearly two decades. Soon, we’ll find a new kitten. But not quite yet.

When we came back, our longhaired kitten was gone – adopted out from under us. The only kitten left in the pen was a shorthaired, silver-and-black tiger-striped male with bright green eyes, a lively demeanor and white tips on his front paws. The humane society volunteer who had fostered him and his littermates said it looked as if he had dipped his paws in milk.

The attendant opened the pen. The kitten climbed my arm and perched on my shoulder, where he sat and observed while I filled out the paperwork.

We put him in the carrier. He meowed the whole way home. We named him Murphy and marveled as he grew from sprightly kitten to warm, loving, devoted friend.

Nineteen years later, on Feb. 12 of this year, I wrote this update on Facebook:

“He joined our family in 1996, a shelter kitten who climbed onto my shoulder for comfort the first time I met him. He has been my companion through 19 years of seismic life change. I named him Murphy, after my favorite baseball player. He is weak now, legs gone, head and tail limp. He made it through the night, so we’ll take him to the vet today to see if anything can be done. Beth and the boys are sad, and so am I. But what a cat – a true friend. He’s had a long, happy life. Two decades of pure love.”

By 9:10 a.m. that morning, he was gone. It was time. We cried and mourned as a family, just as we had when we lost Luna at Christmastime in 2012. The boys had only ever known a world with Murphy in it. Our older sonwants to be a veterinarian, a career goal attributable, in part, to the love he felt – still feels – for that dear cat.

Murphy’s absence is not quite real yet to me. I’m still a bit confused in the middle of the night when I shuffle into our bathroom in the dark and I don’t have to worry about stepping in the litter box. I still am careful not to roll over too abruptly in bed, because I don’t want to unsettle the devoted old cat who purred the night away in the crook of my arm.

But listen: This is not a sad post. Murphy lived a long life and was loved every second of it. He is loved still. He was sweet and dumb and devoted and oh, so lovable. We rejoice in his memory.

And soon … we’re going to adopt another kitten.

We just have to make sure we find the right one.

Our Next Kitten: Candidates

How does one go about that these days? How do you adopt a kitten?

It starts with an impulse.

Before Murphy came to the end, we already were talking about what would come next. My wife is allergic to cats, but she began to campaign for a kitten months before we became a no-pet household.

We Should Adopt a Kitten

It starts with an impulse.

Let me be clear: My wife is allergic to cats, but she wants another one.

She endured 11-plus years of cats under her roof, in her bed, under her feet. Murphy and Luna destroyed our floors with their claws and by other means. Before we replaced the carpet, we waged battle for years against the stubborn redolence of concentrated uric acid (also known as residual dried cat piss).

Her sneeze attacks are sudden and wall-shaking – the sneezes come in rapid-fire bunches and persist until Benadryl works its way into her bloodstream.

Despite this, she wants another cat, and soon. If not for the fact that I insisted we spend a respectful amount of time mourning the absence of my dear feline companion, we already would have a new cat in the family. She and the boys were that eager, but they understood I needed time.

Why does my wife want a cat?

“I like having something alive when I come into the house,” she said. “And I think it’ll bring joy, which is really the only reason that matters.”

OK, then.

We’ll adopt a kitten.

It will happen in the next few weeks, after our younger son’s cast comes off his broken left arm. We’re looking at late April.

Potential parenting fail alert: I might have promised him on the day he broke his arm that he can name our family’s new kitten. His choices so far – Mr. Fuzzy Whiskers or Murphy Junior.

Yeah … we might not be sticking to the letter of the law with that particular promise. I think it’ll be a family decision, with our younger son leading the discussion. That’s a fair interpretation.

(I am not spending the next two decades with a Mr. Fuzzy Whiskers.)

We have some ideas already about the kind of cat we want to join our family. The candidates:

How to Adopt a Kitten

Candidate No. 1.

How to Adopt a Kitten

Candidate No. 2.

How to Adopt a Kitten

Candidate No. 3.

How to Adopt a Kitten

Candidate No. 4.

What You Need to Know About Adopting a Kitten

Upon reflection, we’ll go with none of the above.

And we won’t go into this on a whim, as I did in 1996 with Murphy. Back then, I lacked the perspective required to envision the day two decades later when I would have to say that tearful goodbye to a companion who had shared nearly half my life.

Now, armed with the knowledge that the kitten we adopt next month could very well be cuddled in his or her feline dotage by our grandchildren, we will prepare accordingly and choose carefully.

I’ve read advice from reputable sources, including the ASPCA and Purina. Before we bring home a new kitten, we will:

  • Budget for monthly expenses: food, litter, litter bags, industrial-strength cleaner
  • Budget for annual (and emergency) veterinary bills
  • Prepare the house to absorb the inevitable damage and to combat the inevitable smells and dander
  • Explain to the boys about the responsibility of pet ownership and the opportunity to save an animal’s life by adopting from a shelter
  • Determine whether we want to declaw our new kitten in order to avoid the kind of destruction wrought by our clawed kitties in the past
  • Stock up on Benadryl for the allergies
  • Research places near us that provide cat adoption services
  • Clear time on the schedule for the next few months to nurture our new kitten and help him/her become acclimated to our home

Most important, we’ll explain to the boys that our new kitten is not a replacement for Murphy and Luna. The love and appreciation we feel for our departed companions will always be with us. If anything, as we get to know our new family member, I imagine our memories of Murphy and Luna will grow vivid – the way Murphy would leap and spin with a mid-air cartwheel as he tried to apprehend a bouncing rubber ball; Luna’s propensity to sit up on her hind legs, like a meerkat, and bat relentlessly at a proffered cat treat.

We so look forward to welcoming our new feline friend. Kids and pets – what’s better?

In the coming weeks, I’ll share the story of our family’s new addition. I hope you enjoy the journey, and I welcome any kitten adoption advice you have to offer.

 

One of the Best Commercials About Parenting You’ll Ever See (not sponsored)

/ Carter Gaddis / 4 Comments

This Coca-Cola commercial from Argentina is one of the best portrayals of early parenthood I’ve seen. This is not a sponsored post, but I felt compelled to share this because it spoke to me as a father of two young sons and it made me smile.

I hope it makes you smile, too.

Let’s Talk About God

/ Carter Gaddis / 28 Comments

“Every mythology, every religion, is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.” – Joseph Campbell, the Power of Myth

God

Detail of Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco at the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. Source: Photo illustration by DadScribe.

Our first summer in Florida, I was 13 years old and wheelchair-bound after corrective surgery on both feet. My parents sent my brother and me to vacation Bible school at the Presbyterian church up the road from our Palm Beach Gardens apartment complex. There, in the Sunday school classroom, as I sat in my wheelchair with my feet in their twin casts sticking straight out in front of me, a young man with shaggy brown hair, bad acne and huge glasses asked me if I would accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior.

If so, he added, my soul would be saved and I would be guaranteed a place for all eternity in the Kingdom of the Lord.

That sounded OK to me. So I said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

And he said, “Praise Jesus. You are saved today.”

So, I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

__________________________

Sundays at our house have always been reserved for rest. If not rest, Disney World. If not Disney, Busch Gardens. Or laundry. Or yard work. Or the community pool. Or grocery shopping. Or anything except church.

Put simply, we don’t go. We are among the 20 percent of Americans who a Pew Research Center poll identified as having no religious affiliation. That’s not to say we are not religious. Beth certainly is. She prays regularly, and she believes in the traditional, organized-religion definition of the Christian God.

I don’t share her beliefs. I suppose I would have to be lumped in with the 33 million Americans who identify themselves as atheistic or agnostic. I don’t know what that means, though. What I do know is that I don’t know what happens when we die.

I also know this: Neither does anyone else know. But you know what else? That doesn’t matter.

Religion isn’t about that. Or it shouldn’t be.

Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology whose work influenced George Lucas as he created the Star Wars universe, makes as much sense to me as anyone I’ve read or listened to when it comes to the purpose of religion. He said it exists not to reveal the meaning of life, but to help us find a way to live life with grace, to discover within ourselves an accord between what we experience and the questions and concepts that transcend our experience.

Campbell said God was, in fact, a metaphor for the things that transcend thought. I think what he meant was that because we exist in the field of time — we’re born, we live, we die — it is incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible, to grasp the concept of eternity.

And that’s about as deep as I want to go with that. As I say, I don’t know. I want to know, but I also am not arrogant enough to believe that I have the answers. That said, nor will I at this point in my life acknowledge that anyone else truly knows, either. That’s what I believe.

Which brings us to our sons.

__________________________

Beth wants them to go to church. We have found one that might serve, at least for now.

I have qualms.

On one hand, I want our sons to learn about organized religion, about spirituality, about humanity’s attempts to make sense of it all.

On the other hand, I believe that much of humanity’s strife — today and throughout history — has been caused by organized religion. As Campbell said, practitioners of the individual religions get stuck in their own interpretations of their chosen metaphors. That is, they fail to read the sacred texts or hear the sacred stories as poetry. Instead, they read it and hear it as prose. It is, Campbell said, a purely literary problem.

I see people in the public eye espouse views in the name of their religion about topics such as homosexuality, and it is clearly a bigoted way of thinking. Here’s the problem, though: They don’t think of themselves as bigoted, because they simply are adhering to the things they learned from their religious leaders. They are wrong to think that. Hiding behind specious lessons does not excuse the ignorant. While I might not know the answers, I do know this: Any religious teaching that is used to objectify and dehumanize other people is deplorable. I hope our sons never think that way.

Some of my favorite people in the world are deeply religious, and so sure in their convictions that it sometimes makes me wish that I could give myself over to the rapture and let the joy wash over me like a baptismal font.

It’s tough, but our sons need a frame of reference. They need to be exposed to these ideas — and at 7, our older son is probably as impressionable as he’ll ever be when it comes to ideas about spirituality.

It’s tricky. I bought our older son a book the other day called The Kids Book of World Religions, and he sort of freaked out about the drawing of Jesus on the cross. He needs to know what that means, that the resurrection is emblematic of the “death” and “rebirth” we all must experience as we transition from one stage of life to another (I am aware there are those whose interpretation of the crucifixion differs from this one). I Googled [talking to children about religion] and found an entire blog dedicated to the subject, along with this Washington Post story about the author of that blog. This is not a problem unique to us.

It’s necessary. We want our sons to make informed decisions about how they choose to think about spirituality in the future. We’re going to expose them to different ways of thinking, to different paths. We’re going to let them make their own decisions when they’re ready. You’ve got to start somewhere. So … we’ll start by giving up our Sunday rest or recreation to explore the spiritual.

And we’re going to hope that when (if) they choose their paths, they find grace and peace and love. Above all else, we hope that.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo’s Pieta, Vatican City. Source: Photo illustration by DadScribe.

I’m a Dad, a Husband, a Writer … and I Want It All

/ Carter Gaddis / 14 Comments

I want it all.

I want to be there – actually, physically, there – for my sons. I want to be a life partner and best friend for my wife, and I want her to be those things for me, too. I want a career that pays me what my work is worth and provides the kind of personal and professional gratification that comes from making a meaningful contribution, whether from a business perspective or culturally.

I want all of that.

And I want this, too: I want to write fiction that resonates with someone. I want to write short stories like O’Connor or Fitzgerald and novels like Irving, Chabon or Russo. I want readers. I want readers that want to buy my work in order to read it.

I want that, and I want to play FIFA soccer on my PS3 while I drink cheap red wine or expensive English beer. I want to watch Mad Men and enjoy a nice glass of bourbon every now and then.

I want to play softball again, and I want to go on dates with my wife. I want to go to Walt Disney World every other weekend, and I want to fly to Cape Cod every August.

I really, really want to go back to London. Paris, too. And I’d like to see Rome and Florence one day.

I want it all.

I’m a dad. I’m a husband. I’m a writer.

I want all of the things behind those three curtains.

What? I have to choose?

Says who?

Here’s the problem. I do have to choose, just as men and women have had to choose since the rise of the original American middle class. That began about a century or so ago, when technology and progressive ideas about how the working class should be treated combined to thrust this country into an unprecedented era of relative ease and prosperity. It wasn’t always easy. Not everyone prospered. But on the whole, the world has never seen a society like ours, wherein individual aspirations are – in theory – paramount, and we are free to shape our government in order to create an atmosphere conducive to the pursuit of those aspirations.

A fiercely independent spirit – that’s the American ethos. That’s why we want it all. But who am I kidding? The past three generations – the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y – have collectively believed they are owed it all. We aren’t.

We are, however, owed the freedom to pursue happiness. The freedom to conduct that pursuit is an inalienable right, I believe.

So, what would make me – a dad, a husband, a writer – happy?

I want … it all.

Is that too much to ask?

_________________________

There’s been a lot of public discussion lately about this topic, along with another subject that is directly related to our family, women as primary breadwinners. I think those two topics are connected.

Here is an interesting piece that ran Thursday in Bloomberg Businessweek. Alpha Dads: Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance.

Here is a piece on the Pew research study that concluded that in 40 percent of American households, a woman is the primary breadwinner. That’s how it is now in our house, and I could not be more proud of my wife. Breadwinner Moms.

And here is a link to the blog of an online friend of mine, Scott Behson, an academic from Cornell who researches and writes extensively about family work-life balance issues. There is a lot of good stuff there on this topic, including a guest post by yours truly about why I asked off the baseball beat in 2005. Fathers, Work and Family.

I hardly ever ask for comments, but I would love to know how you do it. How do you make life’s pursuit of happiness work for you? How do you decide what to sacrifice and what will absolutely never fall by the wayside? Our family doesn’t have any big secret. We just do it day by day and work hard to stay on top of all of our responsibilities at home and at work.

Sometimes it’s great. Other times, it feels like our heads are going to explode.

There’s been some backlash lately about the term “work-life balance,” but for us, it really is a balancing act sometimes. For instance, we both took today off in order to attend Jay’s first-grade class play and Chris’ preschool graduation ceremony, which began a half-hour apart and took place a mile apart this morning. There was no way either of us would miss those events, but we had to sacrifice a precious vacation day to do it.

What sort of decisions have you had to make in order to strike that balance? What have you missed? Is it even realistic to think about “having it all,” whether you’re a man or woman? I’d like to think so.