The tricky part is the hallway. I carefully try to place my foot on our wood floor hallway in the tiny spots that don’t creak loud enough for our neighbors to call the police. I gently place my hand on the door knob and open the door, without letting go because if I do it will slam into the wall. I look into the room and bask in the sweetness of my 5-year old twins sleeping silently, peacefully, infusing my heart and soul with love, affection and utter goodness.

This is my little indulgence.

To me, looking in on my sleeping children is like treating myself to dark chocolate in the afternoon of a very tough day at the office. It has become a special moment for me even though it probably lasts less than 90 seconds. But going to bed often reminds of what tomorrow brings, another day away from my children, a day of stress and pressure, and seeing them before I go to sleep is a lovely reminder as to why I am here and what is truly important to me.

The ironic thing for me about my little indulgence is that I have only started doing it in the past year or so. I remember hearing stories about how parents would sneak into their baby’s room and watch them sleep and couldn’t understand how they could do it. For what felt like forever, our children were awfully light sleepers and if we tried to get near their room they would wake up. To complicate things even more, for about three years, our children slept on a completely different floor from us and it was not in the least practical to go upstairs to their room to check on them before bed. We relied entirely on a monitor to let us know whether they were sleeping or not. With the constant buzz of the monitor, I always believed some of the romance of listening to our children sleeping was lost.

But last year we took our bi-annual trip to Ecuador (my wife was born there) and ended up sleeping in the same room with our children. We would put them to bed and leave the room, spending time with our family down there before going to sleep ourselves. We were so worried about whether our children would be able to sleep with us in the same room – especially if we went to sleep at a different time from them. But every time we entered the room, I found myself marveling at how they looked sleeping, so peaceful, so delicate, precious, adorable, every single good feeling I have for them reflected back to me. It was delicious and I was awed by how much I enjoyed it, by how it helped right my orientation, my perspective on the world and my family. In essence, seeing my children sleeping was like an anchor, bringing me back to the place I want to be, to who I want to be; their daddy.

Around the same time, we moved and instead of sleeping on different floors, we were now sleeping in rooms right across the hall from each other. Now before I go to sleep at night, it is easy for me to take a little peek into their room, to see how they are sleeping, to renew what is good in my life without the stress of the day wearing on me, to see only the good in my children, in my life.

That is my little indulgence.

I have been extremely frustrated with Elijah, my four-year old son, because of his refusal to go to sleep without screaming at night. And I feel certain that the issue involved in both school and going to sleep are very similar – separation. But I’ve been intensely trying to help him go to sleep smoothly at night for eight months now and I’m running out of patience. All for the same reason I am upset about leaving him at school – I don’t want him to feel like we are abandoning him, that we don’t love him – I have been unwilling to let him cry it out (okay, my wife also doesn’t want that to happen). But it doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, he insists on making the process as difficult as possible. Tonight, as I sit to write this, I have let him cry. I refuse to go up anymore.

It always comes back to this. I try everything I can think of to not let him cry it out and I always fail. Always. For the past several weeks, every single time he got upset, I went upstairs to try and calm him down, get him into bed and help him think about all of his Happy Thoughts so that he could go to sleep. For the most part it only reinforced to him that if he gets upset he will get to spend more time with me. That was clearly not my goal.

Finally, out of utter frustration, a few nights ago when he started screaming and banging on the door, I went upstairs, picked him up, and put him back into bed without saying a word. I think the shock of me not saying anything stunned him enough that he fell asleep. But the next night I had to do it 4 or 5 times and again last night 5 or 6 times. It was absolutely frustrating and Elijah’s screaming was getting Jordyn upset as well. He knew when he banged on the door that I would come up to put him back to bed and so he kept banging on the door (I never said he was stupid – just frustrating).

Tonight he started banging again within 10 seconds of me leaving. Then again after I had put him back into his bed. This was clearly not working and I went upstairs, put him back into bed and told him that I was not coming back up for the rest of the night. He cried and screamed as I left.

In about five minutes he was quiet and presumably asleep. Is it any wonder parents feel like their kids are smarting than they are?

I’ve been thinking about how to help him adjust smoothly without causing the pain I vowed never to inflict on him. But I’m beginning to wonder if it would only drag out the torture, the way my going up to try and calm him down does at night. It stops the crying, maybe even holds off the pain, but when I leave again, it’s like reopening a wound and the pain picks up where it left off and he starts crying again. If there is one thing I’ve learned from leaving him in the morning every single day, it is that it has to be like removing a band-aid.

If you do it slowly, the pain drags on. If you rip it off real quick, there is a moment of fierce pain, but then everything is ok.

Clearly, I need to apply that “wisdom” to the other area where separation seems to be an issue for my boy, like going to sleep.

I always believed, as involved fathers go, I was pretty high up there if you were to grade my level of involvement. As soon as I walk in the door from work, I herd our almost 5-year old children to the dinner table, sometimes even remember to set it, too. We talk about their day, I give them their medicines and vitamins. I get them changed into their pajamas, take them to the bathroom, and even take them to bed five nights a week. When they wake up in the middle of the night upset, I’m the one they call. On the weekends, I spend almost every moment I can with them, even often having special time with them, just the three of us. I have even spent entire weekends just the three of us when my wife has gone away. I couldn’t imagine how I could be more involved, to be honest.

Well, I am learning, now that my wife has started working full-time, that there was a whole area of their life I was not at all involved in; their school.

My wife, Gem, stayed home to be with our kids after they were born and it was easily the best decision we made in terms of our children. Who better to be with them than someone who has the most incredible capacity for unconditional love of anyone I have ever met? During the first couple of years when they didn’t have school she spent all day with them and I really felt it was my job when I walked in the door to try and take over some of the primary parenting roles so she could get a little break. Of course, my getting involved also served to build a strong relationship with my children – something we both felt strongly about.

Leaving every morning was very hard for me – and for some time hard on my kids – and I learned when I walked out the door to put them in a special corner of my mind so I wouldn’t feel too guilty about leaving and could focus on work during the day. When our kids started going to preschool, I had very little to do with it. Gem would take them every morning, pick them up every afternoon, and when I got home I got to hear how their day went. I was not involved, because it wasn’t necessary or really at all possible for me to be involved. I couldn’t take them to school without showing up to work two hours late and couldn’t pick them up from school if I went to work. My lack of involvement in school meant that I didn’t know what was involved in them going to school.

With Gem now working full-time, there are mornings where she has to leave early or nights when she comes home late. I love my wife deeply, but obviously she can not do everything and I have found myself needing to step my game up a notch in order to meet the new challenges in our family life.

I have been making more dinners – certainly not one of my strengths, I have to say. But I am trying and learning. I try to remind myself the only way I will get better at it is if I do it more. I have been making their lunches as well and dealing with the notes from teachers, requests from other parents and all of the stuff that I had no idea went on inside their backpacks every single day.

It is weird to not be so confident as a father again, to be unsure and uncertain like I was several years ago. When they were born, I had no confidence as a father and was always afraid I was doing something wrong. You can imagine that doing everything twice for my children helped me to get past that pretty quickly. But now I find myself once again entering uncharted territory, delving into something that has been done so well by my wife. While she does it with ease, I am stuck trying to figure out if they need one or two snacks or if they need juice (which I forgot to give them this morning). If I had to do it everyday I would get good at it pretty quickly, but I do it only a couple of times a week, if that much, and I don’t have the hang of it, yet.

But I am trying to be kind to myself, to understand that every time we do something new, we’re not perfect at it yet. Plus, my not doing it perfectly is better than my wife having to do everything herself. Besides, in another few weeks, I will probably be packing lunches like a pro, like my wife.

Until then…I hope nothing I do leaves them too hungry until they get back home.

My little girl loves me. In fact, the other day she told me, “I love you too much!”

And I just looked at her.

“Do you mean you love me so much?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah. I love you SO much!”

But it made me wonder if my little girl’s love for me feels like too much for her. Or maybe it is too much for me?

Her love is strong, so intense, that sometimes I get scared about how much she loves me. Is her adoration, bordering on idolization, just setting us up for future problems? Sometimes as she caresses my face, seemingly memorizing every feature, I find myself wondering, will she end up with a completely unrealistic view of love based on her feelings for me? Am I destined to fail her, to never live up to the intensity and purity of her feelings for me? What would that mean for our relationship? Will she end up with unrealistic expectations of her partner because of how special our connection is? Am I making it impossible for her to have future relationships?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So that self-doubt sits on my shoulder, like a little devil, telling me something is wrong here, that this isn’t love, but something evil, dangerous, and I should begin to break away from her, to save her from myself. That somehow rejecting her now is better than whatever future series of failures and rejections she will experience if things don’t change between us now.

But on my right shoulder sits my little angel, represented by all of the research I have done on the subject of involved fathers and by the belief that loving her can’t be wrong. The research into girls and women with involved fathers has shown that their self-esteem, their self-satisfaction, the length of time they wait to engage in sexual activity is in direct proportion to their feeling loved by their father and the health (from their perspective) of that relationship.

Isn’t that what I want for my little girl? For her to grow up and be intelligent, strong, independent, and healthy, to make smart decisions about her sexuality rather than act out because of something she is missing? Has there ever been any doubt about that?

No way.

This battle continued in my mind, back and forth, particularly fierce this weekend when my wife relayed a story to me.

She was driving our children to school and listening to Marc Cohn’s first album, the same album she and I listened to seven times in-a-row the night we decided we wanted to give our relationship a chance, to see if maybe there really was something special between us. She told them the story and afterwards my little girl said to her, “I’m so glad you picked Daddy. I just love him so much!”

As tears leaked from my eyes after hearing that story, I thought to myself, Can love that pure be bad? Especially when that love is returned ten-fold in my love for her?

Maybe our love will have side-effects I can’t imagine right now, but my little girl will always be certain of one thing; she is loved. Hopefully, this will mean she will never have to worry about whether she is loveable or not, about how she deserves to be treated by her partner, about whether she is entitled to a healthy, loving relationship.

So while I still struggle with the intensity of her love for me, I plan to keep giving her everything I have right back in return.

Many fathers are breaking new ground by becoming more active, more involved in their family – especially with their children. Previous generations defined fatherhood more in terms of providing the economic necessities families need. But this generation, more than any other, has determined that their role as a father does not end with providing economic security, but continues to building a strong bond with their children. Unfortunately, so many of these fathers don’t have role models, don’t have a blueprint to follow in terms of what being involved in the lives of their children actually looks like.

January is National Mentor Month and that seems a perfect time to make sure all of these trailblazing fathers understand that while they may not have a role model for the kind of father and man they want to be, they are transforming themselves into the role models they never had. Today’s involved fathers, in their quest to be a better father, to better meet the needs of their own children, are ensuring that their children will never be without a wonderful fatherhood mentor.

Most dads know they want to give more than they received. They want to see their children more than their fathers saw of them. They want to feel more than their fathers felt with their family. They want to know their children. They want to witness their child’s firsts – first crawl, first word, first step, first throw, first hug, first everything. They want to be there to soothe when their child is upset. They want to help ease their fears and also make them laugh. They want to be more than just the disciplinarian – they want to play and have fun. They want to be a central part of their children’s lives and not just a play a supporting role. They want to be more than just a one-dimensional parent. They want to develop a three-dimensional relationship with their children. The trail this generation of fathers is blazing will make it so much easier for their own children to follow.

This blazing a new trail can take enormous effort. It involves pushing ourselves past our own limits, past our own fears so as not to inflict or impose those fears, those limits on our own children. It involves surpassing the model of fatherhood we grew up with, learning what we wanted but didn’t have and what we had that we want to pass on to our own children. This process of growth can be an incredible process, a process that is challenging, daunting, but phenomenally rewarding.

Every step we take in our personal growth as people, and as parents, gives our children a head start. The growth in ourselves we’ve worked so hard to achieve actually becomes part of our children’s foundation, giving them one less obstacle to overcome. If we men begin to break the “tradition” of distance, then our sons will have an easier time being involved with their children. If we men break the “tradition” of lack of emotion from fathers, we make it easier for our sons to grow up believing it is healthy and important to experience their emotions. We also make it easier for our daughters to find a man she can be truly emotionally intimate with. Every foot of path we clear on this new trail – even if we only partially clear it – creates an easier path for our children.

Because it’s not just about being a good father, about being a good mentor or role model.

Our children define so much of themselves based on who we are. Our sons build their definition of manhood based on us, on what we do, on how we are, on who we are and how they see us. The healthier they see us and relate with us, the healthier they will be, the better chance they will have at having strong, healthy relationships throughout their lives.

But our daughters also define manhood based on who we are, on how we act, on what we do. They develop their ideal partner based on their emotional (and sometimes even physical) profile of us. Their sense of self, their self-esteem is so intimately wrapped up in our relationship with them. And, of course, their ability to attract and be attracted to healthy men is based on how they view us, on their relationship with us. If we have taught our daughters they are special, unique, beautiful and intelligent, they will expect men to treat them that way. If we don’t…

National mentoring month is a good time to congratulate all of you trailblazing dads, to remind you of the incredible work you are doing to not only improve your life, but to improve the generations that will follow you in this world. You are the foundation for all that comes after you and that foundation looks pretty strong from where I’m standing.

Ahhh, the holiday season. The season of lights and presents and holiday cheer. The season of shopping and stress. The season of overwhelment. But this year we have a solution to it all. This year, we’re going to Disney World!

Really.

Not only are we one of those families where we have both Jewish and Christian members so we celebrate Chanukah at our house and Christmas with my wife’s family, but we also celebrate a birthday during December as well.

Or two.

Actually three.

Okay, we celebrate four birthdays during the month of December.

Well, to be completely honest we celebrate four birthdays in one week of December. In our family, we have four birthdays during one week and then we spend 51 weeks of the year recovering from and preparing for that one week.

My children were born a day before my wife’s birthday. In fact, her birthday present that year was getting to hold her children for the first time (they were born 2.5 months early and were in the NICU – we didn’t actually try to have all of our birthdays in the same week). My birthday is four days after my wife’s and we often spend those days teasing each other – me about how old she is and her about how much of a baby I am. My wife is four days older than I am and those four days are the only days of the year anyone would ever know. Since we’ve been together, she and I have always shared a birthday party together. When our children were born, well, we didn’t have to schedule another party, did we?

For their first birthday we threw a very small gathering for family. It was lovely but obviously the kids had no idea what was going on yet. The second year we threw our traditional party for all of us – with four birthday cakes! They were young enough to understand they were having a lot of fun and family kept coming over and giving them more presents. Each time family came over someone brought another cake and we celebrated someone’s birthday one more time. Between Chanukah, our birthdays, and Christmas we were lighting candles and handing out presents almost every single night it seemed. By the time January rolled around and there were no more candles or presents after dinner they asked us, “Where are candles? Presents?” That was our first inkling as to how overwhelming and challenging this was going to be.

By the time last year rolled around we threw a birthday party for them and their friends from pre-school and then afterwards threw a party for ourselves – though again we had the four cakes (everyone gets to choose which kind they want like Baby Einstein or Butterflies or ice cream cake). We tried better to control the number of presents they received and even hid a whole box of them (then we were able to give them a new present every month or so), but the entire month still ends up being so overwhelming and truly takes its toll on all of us. It is just too much. It is truly a year of celebrations squished into two weeks. My wife and I have joked about running away, maybe taking a cruise for that week or something. This year we got an opportunity to go to Disneyworld and we took it.

I have no doubt it will still be an overwhelming week in the Magic Kingdom, but it will be a week of only us together, away from the chaos of presents and cakes and celebrations.

This year we won’t be focusing on presents and cakes and candles. This year we will be celebrating the birth of our wonderful family, a family that during this holiday season is reason enough for me to celebrate.

When we started selling our house and looking for a new one last year, I drew upon my years of therapy training and experience and my well-honed instincts and sat down with my almost four-year old twins and explained to them that we were looking for a new house. Every weekend we were going to be having open houses as well as looking for our new home. I didn’t want my children to get stressed out by what they were seeing, all the strange people, all of the talk of a new home. I wanted them to understand what was happening all around them.

That was easily my biggest mistake in the moving process.

My children – especially my little girl – became so stressed, so anxious, I’m not sure she has been the same since. She became afraid to go to school in the morning, afraid every time we left, afraid we were going to move without her, afraid she would be all alone, afraid she would not have a bed to sleep in. She became afraid to go to sleep at night and began having trouble sleeping through the night, waking up with nightmares. It was horrible and I felt terrible. I knew my talk had actually made everything worse for her instead of easier.

Fortunately, once we moved and they saw their new bedroom, saw that Mommy’s and Daddy’s room was right across the hall, that they had a wonderful playroom, that the backyard was nice, that the house was safe, things got a lot better. But I vowed to be more careful about what and when I explained things to my children.

Recently, my wife, Gem, started working for the first time since our children were born 4.5 years ago. While it is only part-time in the beginning, it is a major shift for our family. A shift we have intentionally not talked to our children about. As anxious as that made me, “Mr. Talk About Everything to Be Prepared,” it has worked out much better than our move.

I remember my wife and I sitting at the dining room table brainstorming how and when to talk to our kids about this. We rehashed the tough move and the effect it had on them, nervous about making the wrong move, hurting them again despite our best intentions. Finally we decided we would basically follow their lead. We wouldn’t bring it up with them. We wouldn’t make a big deal out of this. We would go with the flow.

We did talk about her starting a new job in front of them, trying not to hide anything from them, but also not sitting down for “A Talk,” either. On her first day, I stayed home from work and spent the day with my children. On her second day, their Nana came up from Philly for her weekly visit. On day three, their Tia (Aunt) spent the day with them. Tia was going to be their primary caretaker when my wife and I weren’t around and they absolutely love her so that made my wife’s absence a little bit easier to handle.

When Gem told them she was going to work they took it in stride. A couple of weeks later Gem even brought them to her office so they could see it, see where Mommy is now spending her time away from them – the way they have visited my office countless times in the past 4.5 years.

Of course, the adjustment has been significantly harder on us and has made me wonder how families manage to do any of the things that need to get done, like groceries and other errands, when both parents work. It is terribly hard and overwhelming, so much to do in an incredibly short period of time. What’s worse, is now we both miss our children, now we both have little heartaches for the time we don’t see them, the things they are learning without either one of us around. More and more of their time is spent without either of us now and it wears on us both.

But at least, while it has been rather stressful on us, our kids have been spared much of the stress and anxiety – in part, certainly, because we spared them from “A Talk.”

Sometimes it is too easy to forget why we’re trying to get our children to do certain things, to get so wrapped up in the goal that we forget we want them to do it because we care and love for them so much. I’m just going through another of those moments right now. The enjoyment of the process has turned something that seemed like it would be a chore, something I wasn’t sure we could do, to something I have begun to look forward to every night.

My 4.5 (okay, four and three-quarter) year old little girl has decided she doesn’t want to wear diapers at night anymore. Over the past couple of months we have begun the push to get our twins out of diapers while they sleep. We decreased the amount of water in their sippy cups they kept on their night tables. Then we stopped the water at night altogether. We’ve even tried to encourage them to get up when they need to go to the bathroom and come to our room and we’ll help them to the bathroom. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well. Changing two sets of sheets at 3:30 in the morning was not a fun way to start the day – for any of us. Fortunately, Jordyn refused to give up. Much like her Daddy I am proud to say, once my little girl makes up her mind, she makes a commitment to achieving her goal. She has decided she only wants to wear underpants at night and she is doing whatever it takes to make that happen.

And so am I.

We decided, after talking to our pediatrician, that we should wake her up before we went to bed and take her to the bathroom. I took that responsibility on and for the past three nights I have woken my little girl up at 11:00 or so at night and taken her to the bathroom.

I first thought this was not going to be fun. I worried about whether she want to be woken up. Would this just be another fight? Would we wake up her brother sleeping in the other bed in their room? I worried how it would affect her sleep. Would she be able to fall asleep afterwards? Would she want me to stay with her? If Jordyn doesn’t get enough sleep we all suffer so her sleep is especially important.

The first night I gently woke her up.

“Jordyn. Come on. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

She popped up out of bed. “Okay, Daddy.” She was ready. We held hands down the hall to the bathroom and held hands on the way back. She crawled into bed and fell fast asleep before I was even out the door, I think.

The second night she was more tired, but did very well. More hand holding and I even got to hear one more “I love you” as I walked out of their room.

Last night she was so tired that I picked her up out of bed. I have to tell you, one of the greatest feelings as a father, in my life, is feeling my little girl mold her body to mine when she is tired. She wraps her arms and legs around my body, puts her head on my shoulder, and melts into me. It is a feeling of closeness like I have never felt before. It was so wonderful I barely even felt her weight as I carried her down the hall.

She went to the bathroom and afterwards I offered to carry her back. She didn’t say anything, but after she dried her hands, she reached her hands up to me. I gladly picked her up and carried her back to her bed.

“I love you, Sweetie Girl.”

“I love you, too, Daddy,” and she fell asleep.

I thought it would be such a hassle to wake her up to try and get her to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, another thing for me to remember before I go to bed at night. Instead not only am I helping my little girl achieve something she really wants – to wear underpants at night – but I also get one more cuddle, one more special, intimate moment with her.

And there can never be too many of those.

4:00am

That’s what the clock read. Is it raining? I should go look out the window to see if it is raining because if it’s not I can turn off the alarm and sleep a little later.

But I can’t get up to go check…tooooooooooo sleeeeeeeppppppppyyyyyy…

…

“ELIJAH!” I heard myself scream. All of a sudden I am out of my bed so quickly that I forgot to get my glasses, running towards the stairs. I don’t know what I heard, but somehow I knew he was in trouble and he responded with a sound. I can tell from his voice he is on the stairs. Is the monitor working?

He started crying loudly.

I picked him up, halfway to the top of the stairs, and held him close to me, whispering soothing words, trying to calm and quiet him down. After a short period of time he was whimpering into my shoulder.

“Let’s go upstairs and check on Jordyn,” I whispered to him. I thought I heard her stirring up there and can only imagine how our outbursts have frightened her.

I carried him upstairs, while he wrapped his arms around my neck. When I opened the door, I checked that the green light on the monitor is on (which it is) and I wonder why he didn’t say anything before he started the dangerous trek downstairs in the dark.

I put him down and checked on Jordyn, who clearly seemed like she had been jolted awake. But my little girl is extremely good at falling asleep – I could not possibly count how many times she has been woken up by Elijah in the middle of the night and though we’re both a bit out of practice, I am sure she will fall asleep without my help.

Elijah and I sat and talked a little. I asked what happened and he said he heard a noise. That is often the case and my only guess is that he had a dream that woke him up and he was unable to go back to sleep. Instead of crying out loud, he started the journey from his room, through their playroom, to the stairs and down the stairs. If I hadn’t heard him on the stairs he would’ve had to go through the dining room, then through a small hallway leading to our bedroom. We use to keep a childproof device on the doorknob so he couldn’t get out, but have since decided that is no longer safe. It’s just that it doesn’t feel safe without it when he starts that adventure on his own in the dark.

I reminded him he is going to camp tomorrow and he needed a good night’s rest and he smiled. I reminded him he’ll see his teachers and new friends and he smiled some more. He finally seemed ready for sleep and I asked him to get into bed and he did without struggle.

“Tell me about your Happy Thoughts.”

“All the people that love me,” he says.

“That’s a good one…You know I’m one of those people, right? You know I love you, Elijah, don’t you?”

“Yeah”

Then I say my usual goodnight greeting. “SSsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooooooooo much I love you, Elijah.” In the winter, he had gotten scared by the hissing of the radiator in the middle of the night so I thought maybe I could associate that hissing sound with something positive and it has stuck.

“So much I love you, too, Daddy.”

“Oh good,” I said smiling at him.

I kissed Jordyn goodnight, made sure she was okay. I think she was still a bit shaken but seemed ready to fall asleep – if only we would stop talking.

I kissed Elijah one more time and opened the door.

“Daddy?”

Uh oh.

“Yes, Elijah?” I said cautiously.

“Maybe…”

Oh no.

“Maybe tomorrow after scho—Maybe tomorrow after camp…”

Please don’t ask me to pick you up Elijah. I can’t. I have to go to work.

“Maybe…”

Please, please don’t ask.

“Maybe we could call you?” he said finally.

“Absolutely! I would LOVE that. Let’s remember to tell Mommy in the morning okay?” I said with relief dripping from every word.

“Good night! I love you” and I closed the door and walked downstairs.

When I returned to my bed, finally, my heart still racing, thumping in my chest from the adrenaline rush of his first, almost unheard, cry. I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe what I saw.

4:16am

On Sunday we went to the mall with my Okapis. While Elijah, my 3-year old son, got a haircut with Mommy and Abuelita, I got Jordyn, his twin sister, all to myself. And it was lovely. One of the biggest frustrations I have during the week is not only do I not get enough time with my Okapis, I don’t get good time with my Okapis. I get the worst time of the day with them, the time when they are their most tired and that is the most structured. They need to eat. They need to take their vitamins. They need to change into PJs. They need to get nebbied. They need to brush their teeth. They need to go to bed. They need to do it within 1.5 hours of me coming home. I just don’t understand why it doesn’t become a lovefest every single night.

I also almost never get time alone with either of them. We keep meaning to change that, but keep running into challenges. Of course, the time I had with Jordyn was lovely; we even got a chance to look at some clothes for her. She is ridiculously smart, very observant and does wonderful things with her tone of voice – not only does she pick up new vocabulary very well, she is astute enough to mimic the tone, as well, appropriately. I don’t get to see that side of her enough at home, but at the mall with all of that stimulation and the fact that she has been there more than I have because she goes with my wife – especially when it is cold or wet – it really comes out. I was having a great time when Elijah, my wife and her mother met up with us.

Then it was as if I had disappeared.

Before I knew it I was standing alone, and the transition from special time with Jordyn to being invisible was jarring. I was so taken aback by the shift from being The Daddy to all of a sudden being what felt like nothing. I get special time with my Okapis – we call it Los Tres Amigos time, but I don’t get one-on-one time and was amazed at how special, how enjoyable it was and then, as I was just getting warmed up, it was gone.

I did recover and even got some nice one-on-one time with Elijah when we went to buy little basketballs to play with in our backyard. Then we quickly grabbed some lunch and afterwards, I was left behind at the table while everyone else started walking to the car. It was that same sensation of no longer being visible. I was carrying the loot we had purchased (my wife calls me “my pack mule”) and trying to catch up, when all of a sudden Elijah dropped back and wanted to hold hands with me. So my wife took the cup I was holding and I held hands with him. Then Jordyn fell back so she could hold hands with me and I gave the bags to my mother-in-law. I went from wonderful individual time to a jarring sense of invisibility back to being The Daddy again, holding hands with my beautiful Okapis and loving every minute of it.

“This is the life,” I said to them.

“This is the best part of my life,” Jordyn said.

“It’s the best part of my life, too, Sweetie Girl.”

And another weekend sadly came to an end in the Okapi household.

The other night our whole family went to have Chinese food together. As we were getting ready to go outside into the frigid cold, I started zipping up Elijah’s jacket, but was having a little bit of trouble. It was the second or third time I had done it that day and now I was pretty certain. I turned to my wife and said, “I think we need to get him another jacket. He is getting too big for this one.”

“No!” he almost screamed.

“What, Elijah?”

“No, but I’m not getting big. I don’t want to be bigger!”

And therein lies the crux of many of our problems.

I’ve always thought that most children wanted to grow up fast. Being older or bigger means being able to do things they can’t do now, it means privileges, rights, they don’t currently have. It is only as we get older that we wish for time to slow down, to pass by less rapidly. But I am finding myself perplexed that neither of my twin three-year olds really want the privileges of growing up.

My children started sleeping in toddler beds when they were a little older than two-and-half years. We transitioned them after a week where they seriously tried to climb out of their cribs (Elijah even jumped out in anger) and complained about how they didn’t want to sleep in their cribs anymore. But now, several times a week, they tell me they want their cribs back, that they miss their cribs. The same cribs they wanted out of their room so they could sleep freely and get in and out of bed whenever they wanted. While I’m pretty certain if we brought the cribs back into their room, they would get very upset, we’re not going to find out. There is no going back.

In addition, my children are not potty-trained. And have absolutely no desire to use a potty. None whatsoever. I joke that they will see the benefits of using a potty when they are packing to go off to college. When they have to choose between a suitcase of their clothes or iPod accessories and bringing that silly box of diapers, they’ll say, “Oh, I don’t need those anymore.” Then, and only then, will we finally be done with diapers. We have tried so many different things to persuade, to bribe, to entice them to give it a shot, but they are adamant. Sure, they complain when we change their diapers, but even that doesn’t make them want to use the potty.

When it comes to eating, Jordyn is willing to eat most things even if she only really wants to use her fingers. Elijah, however, struggles with eating almost every night. His modus operandi is to procrastinate until just about everyone else at the table has finished. Then, after having been reminded and then urged and even enticed to eat, my wife or his Tia or his Abuelita or his Nana will try to feed him until he is done. He clearly seems to relish being fed by the women in his life he loves the most.

This summer Elijah and Jordyn will start camp and in the fall they will start pre-school for the first time. They have never been to daycare, because we didn’t want anyone else taking care of our children. Instead of daycare, my wife stayed home to be with them every day. Now, they don’t want to leave Mommy, they don’t want to go to school. This also means we are unable to use school as an incentive to being potty trained.

I believe all of these issues are related by the fact that my children don’t want to be bigger, they don’t want to grow up, they don’t want to lose being a baby. I know that this is “normal” in the developmental process, but it has been going on for a rather long time. They don’t want the rights and privileges that go along with getting older. They are fearful of the unknown future and the changes it might bring them. They want the comfort of what is familiar, of Mommy, and hopefully, even of Daddy.

But I wonder if we are sending them a message that we don’t want them to grow up? Or maybe we are pushing them too hard to grow up? I really don’t think so, though I am not certain enough to rule it out. I do feel like we are dealing with forces we don’t fully understand – the toddler mind.

One of the reasons I became a therapist is because I have always had a gift in being able to understand people, their motives, their thought processes, to intuit their feelings. This has certainly helped me with my children, more than I ever imagined actually. But, it is not enough and it is situations like these, these larger developmental issues, psychological struggles, where I feel the gulf of lack of communication between us and them. They can’t tell us what is going on. They probably don’t even know. But it is our job to help them nonetheless without hurting them too badly in the process.

Right now, I feel we are stuck in the middle of two opposing forces. My children on one side, wanting to stay exactly the way they are, not wanting to get bigger, to get older and the reality of school and clothes and everything else that signals our children are getting older and older every single day. What makes this even more difficult is while I am tired of changing diapers and of cleaning up after their messy eating, I am sad to see their clothes get too small for them. I am sad to see the toddler accent disappear. I am sad my little girl doesn’t easily fit on my chest anymore or that carrying them both at the same time is harder and harder. This is the best my life has ever been and a part of me doesn’t want it to change, either. But I keep this buried in the corner of my heart and hope that they don’t notice, hope that sharing their growing up experience continues to be the most incredible time of my life.

I have written quite a bit about how hard leaving my three-year old twins every morning is for me. To sum up: I hate it. I hate leaving them every morning and feel there is something fundamentally flawed with a society that makes it so difficult for parents to stay home with young children.

Yesterday that difficult experience took a surreal turn. Yesterday, I didn’t leave my children to go to work. Instead, I brought them with me! My wife and I and our children took the train and the subway together to get to where I work. I kept reminding them this is how Daddy goes to work every day and they seemed like they were trying to absorb it all.

I took the opportunity to bring them to work because my wife had a meeting elsewhere in the city. When we got to my stop, we all got off and said goodbye to Mommy. They handled it very smoothly and we started walking out of the subway into the building I work, while she got back on the subway to head to her meeting.

When we got inside they were SO shy. Everyone was excited to meet them (apparently, seeing two bulletin boards of pictures and the hundreds of pictures on my screensaver is just not enough) and this was a bit overwhelming for them. I’ve been working there since before they were born and many of my colleagues have heard quite a bit about my children. Now, they are closing in on 3.5 years and haven’t been to my office in over a year.

After awhile they did get comfortable and behaved very well – even letting me get some work done while they were there. At one point, I stood up from my desk to go talk to a colleague and bumped into my children. For a brief moment I had gotten lost in what I was doing and I was taken aback to find them there. Something about that unnerved me, but I wasn’t quite sure at the time what it was.

I had been wanting to bring them in for some time and I think they really enjoyed it – especially Elijah who has more trouble than Jordyn with my leaving. That place, my work, is the cause of so much pain for him, I’m quite surprised he didn’t spit and stomp all over it. Instead, he enjoyed seeing the place that takes me away from them. When we had lunch afterwards he said, “Remember we went to your work?” When my children ask me if I remember something, they usually ask about something that has significance to them – not necessarily a positive experience, but a significant one. When Elijah does it, he tends to be asking about stuff that connects him to his parents. It is possible that seeing my work was another connection to me for him – rather than the cause of pain it has always been.

For me the experience was captured by that moment where I was taken aback to find them there. Work has always been separate from my children and having them there was like the bringing together of two worlds that were meant to always be separate. How many times have I been at work, looking at their pictures, wondering why I do this every single day? How many times have I gotten a phone call from Gem and wanted to leave work right then? How many times have I walked out the door, still hearing their screams in my head? How many times have I heard my children ask me, “You have to go to work?” and wishing I could say no, but having to say yes. I have carefully built a firewall between these two lives of mine, my two worlds. Work is the place I go everyday, where I am without them, where I try to simultaneously keep my connection to them, but not think too much about them so I can get through the day. It has been a balancing act.

Today, when I was leaving for the train, Elijah said, “I’m going to miss you, Daddy,” but it didn’t have quite the same pain that saying goodbye has often had in the past. Maybe seeing work, sitting in my chair, playing with stuff on my desk, seeing all of my pictures of them, is helping him with my leaving.

When I walked into work this morning, however, as usual they weren’t with me, but I remember them having been there. Those same images that might help my children deal with my leaving better seem to threaten to ruin my firewall configuration, to blur the line between my two worlds; the world where I want to be, the other where I have to be.

My wife and I were taking a few minutes to catch up with our days when she said, “Did I tell you what Jordyn did today during nebby?”

“I don’t think so.” Nebby is what we call the nebulizer. We have to nebulize our two-year old twins every night to try and prevent asthma from developing and to decrease the congestion in their pulmonary system.

“She was holding her Elmo in a blanket and patting him on the back saying, ‘It’s okay, Elmo. It’s okay. It’s almost over and then you’ll feel better. You feel better, right?’”

Tears were welling up in both of our eyes and we couldn’t say anything at all. I had no trouble picturing my little girl doing that, hearing her voice in my head, seeing Elmo snuggled up in her arms.

“That little girl has been through so much.” My voice sounded hoarse, cracky and my wife looked like she hadn’t heard me.

“I know. I know,” she said, her voice sounding far away.

Our daughter and son were born almost two-and-a-half months early. She weighed only three pounds. She had trouble breathing and needed a ventilator for a couple of days until she could breathe enough on her own. She spent one month in the hospital before we could bring her home with us.

Two months after she was born, before her due date, and only four weeks after she came home from the hospital, Jordyn required laser eye surgery on both of her eyes to prevent her retinas from becoming detached and going blind. I’ll never forget waiting all morning for the surgery to start while she was starving and thirsty from not being allowed to eat or drink anything – as if the surgery wasn’t torture enough. Then afterwards, my little girl’s face was swollen and she clearly didn’t feel good, but she had no idea what was happening. I wanted so badly to help but there was nothing I could do for her. My wife and I comforted ourselves by telling each other she wouldn’t remember any of this. If it had to happen, now is the best time since she wouldn’t have any knowledge of it as she got older.

A few months later we found this thing on her belly and day after day this thing grew and we had to take her to a specialist. Because this growth could become cancerous, she needed to have it removed. I will never forget pinning her down with my hands to prevent her from jerking around, trying to soothe her with my voice and listening to her scream and cry. Afterwards my ears echoed with the sounds of her screams the way it does after leaving a bad rock concert. All of this while my face was only inches away from the doctor slicing the growth off of her belly. As she grows, her scar grows with her, a constant reminder of that traumatic day. I keep hoping it will disappear, allowing me to pretend she never had to go through this.

Shortly thereafter, we found out that while the eye surgery saved her from going blind, it wasn’t enough. The problem was her brain wasn’t paying attention to the signals one of her eyes sent. If that continued for too long, she would lose her sight completely in that eye. The solution was for her to wear a patch over one eye for one hour a day to try and strengthen the weaker eye.

The hour she wore the patch quickly became the worst hour of the day for all three of us. She would rip it off as soon as we turned away and we would have to put a new one on. Then we started to notice every time she ripped it off, she was ripping out her eyebrow hair as well. The patch the doctor recommended was essentially a band-aid and stuck to her face with adhesive. Before I knew it, I found myself pinning her down once again just to put the damn patch on her. If we put the patch on her, we were clearly causing her pain. If we didn’t put the patch on her, we would allow her to go blind. We chose the lesser of two evils and hated ourselves for hurting her so much.

Then the doctor said she needed to wear the patch for six hours a day because her eye was getting even worse. Getting Jordyn to wear the sticky patch for most of the day was a horrific struggle with neither of us winning. She would rip it off, we would put it back on only so she could rip it off again. Within a day or two she developed irritation over her eyes from ripping the patch off so much. Fortunately, I found a place on the web called Patch Pals (www.patchpals.com). The patches could fit over Jordyn’s glasses and they had designs on them. We bought her a panda and a helicopter to try out.

They changed everything. She thought they were adorable, she got to choose which one she wanted and if she took her glasses off, it was easy and painless to put them back on. All of a sudden six hours a day was relatively easy – which worked out very well since when we went back to the doctor he wanted her to wear it eight hours a day. He also told us she would have to wear it eight hours a day for about one year and would wear a patch for a significant part of the day until she was six or seven years old.

During the initial patching period, we found out that both of our children have something called Reactive Airway Disease. It is essentially the precursor to asthma. Both of our children’s air passages are smaller than they should be (primarily because they were born so premature) and when they get colds, the mucous restricts airflow and they have difficulty breathing. To prevent this from happening, they have to be nebulized every night with a preventative medicine and if they have a cold or are coughing with an additional medicine as well.

It has been almost three years of surgeries, of patches, of nebulization. Three years of consoling ourselves that she has been too young to remember what she has been through, that it probably hurts us more than it hurts her. But when my little girl comforts her Elmo, mimicking the way we have comforted her through all that she has been through, our hearts break. She does remember. Maybe not all of it, maybe not everything, but too much. And as much as I want to, I can’t do anything to change that.

But I have to remind myself that she comforts Elmo, because she has experienced our comfort, our love, and it has helped her. When I see her running around or intently watching a video or trying to read a book, I wonder if, even though she has been through so much, and remembers more than we had hoped, she has been affected less than we feared. My little girl doesn’t have cancer, she can breathe well, she can still see. It could’ve been so much worse for all of us. Everything we did was not to hurt her, but to save her from something even worse. She comforts Elmo because we succeeded, not because we failed.

You know how some parents look forward to going back to work to get a break from their children and spouses? I’m not one of them. I hate going to work in the morning. Absolutely hate it. I hate leaving my family – especially on Monday after I have spent so much time with them during the weekend. To make matters worse, my twin 19-month old children hate it, too. Sometimes they will cry and scream when I lean down to say goodbye. Other times they cling to me when I give them a hug and refuse to let go – as if I really want to leave in the first place.

My children have developed different ways of dealing with my leaving in the morning. Jordyn, my little girl, has somehow learned on her own to keep her connection to me throughout the day. She will point to pictures of me and yell out, “Da-Dee!” Or, and this just broke my heart, she will pick up my sneakers, take them to my wife and say, “Da-Dee shoes.” When she started to do this, my leaving in the morning wasn’t as hard on either of us.

But for my little boy, my leaving was much harder on him. When he gets excited, he sometimes actually has to back away from what got him so excited while his whole body shakes with emotion. He is already quite attuned to his emotions; he just doesn’t have the tools yet to deal with all of them. To deal with my leaving, he either would cry or scream or remain distant. When I came home at night he would barely acknowledge me, while his sister would scream out “Daddy” and lift up her arms for me to pick her up. I felt hurt and angry – mostly at myself – thinking about how much I was hurting Elijah every morning.

This continued until my wife observed that somehow Jordyn was able to remain connected to me during the day, while Elijah wasn’t and that was why he had such a difficult time. The challenge became how to help Elijah feel connected to me during the day.

My first thought was maybe a piece of clothing, like one of my shirts. I also took a lunch hour to look around at different stores to see if there was something I could buy that could better tie us together in his mind. While I was trying to find a long-term solution, I decided to give him the towel I use when I ride my bike in the morning. I asked him to take care of it for me during the day as I gave him a hug and a kiss goodbye.

The second day I gave it to him, he said “Tow-a?” The third day, my wife told me that he had been in our bedroom while I was at work and had found one of my work shirts on the floor. He then laid down and put his head on it and said, “Da-Dee.” He got it! He connected to me while I was not there. When she told me about that, I had tears in my eyes.

This morning, a few weeks after we started the “interim” solution of the towel, he was reaching out for it because he couldn’t wait to hold it. During the day, he tries to put it on his shoulder and wear it like I do. Now, not only do they not get too upset when I leave, but they even wave “Bye, Bye” to me as I drive my car in front of the house on my way to work. Work, where I have pictures of them all over my wall and have a slideshow of them as my screensaver – trying to keep that connection to them during the day so I don’t get too upset.

“You do not speak to Daddy like that!” Gem scolded Jordyn, our four-year old daughter. She has just yelled at me out of anger and that is not acceptable in our house.

We were all sitting at the dinner table and a standoff had begun. Jordyn was refusing to give an inch.

“Jordyn, go to your timeout,” Gem reminded her. Jordyn knows screaming like that is a timeout, but she didn’t want to go.

I remained seated and silent at the table watching my little girl figure out what her options really were. While observing this I was struck by something to which I have been giving a lot of thought. How often do you back each other up as parents?

There is no question in my mind after parenting twins for four years that parenting is a team sport and it works best if both parents are using the same playbook. I think the strength of teammates is how well they stick up for each other. Jordyn just broke two of our rules, respect for each other – especially us as parents – and no screaming. Since it was directed at me, Gem decided to jump in and back me up. I don’t think she consciously made that decision, but she did it because we work together that way, because she knows I do the same for her.

That is the key to a true partnership. Backing each other up builds a sense of trust, builds upon the trust the two of you have and ensures your children understand that these lines in the sand, these rules, the limits we set for them are serious and there are consequences for crossing them.

There are two types of situations where it is very important that we parents back each other up. The first is like in the example above; one parent is talked back to or disrespected in some way and the other steps in to demonstrate that this kind of behavior is not acceptable in any way, shape, or form. This not only teaches them about consequences, but also teaches them how to treat other people and, maybe most importantly, how they should expect to be treated. If we demand to be treated with respect, we are also modeling for them how to demand the same.

The second type of situation revolves more around the child’s actual behavior. The other day when I came home from work, Gem was telling Jordyn to get into timeout (yes, she is much more the boundary tester), but Jordyn was not budging.

Before I had even put back backpack down and taken off my jacket, I told Jordyn to get into the timeout corner. Jordyn looked at me, realizing she was boxed in, and hung her head, but walked into timeout. I don’t need to know what she did or didn’t do. I don’t need an explanation of why the situation was difficult. If Gem is giving Jordyn a timeout then she gets a timeout. By backing up Gem, I am not only demonstrating to both of our children that their mother and father mean business when it comes to following our rules, but it also means I am supporting Gem in her parenting, in her decisions and shows the trust I have in her. If I came in and questioned what was going on, that would send a powerful message that somehow I didn’t think she could handle it herself, that she wasn’t the authority on whether rules were broken and the consequences for such action. How can we demonstrate that kind of lack of trust to people we love?

Certainly, Gem and I have talked about the rules we have in place and have developed a set of expectations and rules for our children. These common understandings make backing each other up much easier. But if one of us has a problem with the way the other is handling a situation, we wait until we are alone, until the situation is over and talk about it, to see if next time there might be a better way or if we need to be more or less flexible with our rules in certain situations.

Parenting really is a team sport and when teammates don’t trust each other, don’t respect each other, not only will the children understand that consequences don’t always apply, but they will learn to be disrespectful to each other, to others and, maybe worst of all, that it is okay for them to be treated disrespectfully.

“Okay Jordyn. Your timeout is over. Please say you’re sorry to Daddy and come back to the table.”

She apologized, gave me a delicious hug and joined us again at the dinner table.

But when parents build on their own trust with each other, then children learn valuable and lifelong lessons about trust and respect. The kinds of lessons that will make a difference in all of their future relationships and even help them to be better partners and better parents, when it is their turn.

Q: My husband and I seem to have different parenting styles and we’re really starting to fight about it. Is there anything we can do to get on the same page in terms of parenting styles?

A: Talk. Talk. And then talk some more! Too many couples become parents only to find they don’t necessarily agree on how they should be parenting. They make assumptions, assuming they both have the same vision for their child, for how they want their child to be upon adulthood, and that they both believe on how to get there.

Unfortunately, many parents don’t agree on the overall goal, what they want their child to be like as an adult – let alone on the day-to-day issues that really stress us out. Before they know it they are fighting, contradicting each other or, even worse, under cutting the other’s authority right in front of their child. The best and most effective way to avoid this is communication. Talk to each other.

Before you have children or if you already do ask one of the grandparents to take them for a night so you two can go out to dinner. But bring a pen and some paper. Write down what I like to call your Guiding Principles. Guiding Principles of parenting are a roadmap, the big picture so to speak, that we as parents tend to forget in the day-to-day stresses of raising our children. Guiding Principles are the things you and your partner believe are the most important in raising a child. You probably have some already, but haven’t thought of them in this way. The way to start developing your own Guiding Principles is to imagine your child at 25 years old and think about how you want them to be – not their occupation, but the kind of person they are. Do they have manners? Can they express emotions effectively? Can they easily connect with others? Do they know themselves well? Do they value the same things you do? And on and on and on. Once you’ve done that, take note of the characteristics in common in each of your descriptions of your future adult child. Use this to develop a shared vision between the two of you of your future, adult child.

From this you can develop a list of Guiding Principles which will help you remember your goals on a day-to-day basis. Then you can focus on how you can parent every day that will help your child become who you want him to be. What can you do now to help your child become that way, develop those skills or perceptions of himself? How does discipline play a role? Establishing boundaries? Teaching manners? Having a routine for the day? Play time? Sleep? Eating? Etc.

This can be a difficult and challenging process, but when you and your husband are on the same page, have the same vision for your child, share the same Guiding Principles, and are able to work together to make it happen, it will make things easier for you and give your child a much better chance to achieve his full potential.

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

It seems like such a little thing. The double stroller for my children, 3-year old twins, is sitting in the basement taking up valuable space, but I just don’t know what to do with it. It has been in our family for over three years now and somehow shoving it in the garage doesn’t seem a just ending for this device that has been with us for so long. It used to live in the back of our Outback and was there when we needed it. It has been to Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Florida and even Ecuador with us, not too mention the mall, the park and hundreds of other places.

I can remember shopping for double strollers, still shocked that we were having two babies instead of one. When we registered for items, I went along with my wife, but I deferred to her most of the time; I just got to use the UPC gun which they developed solely to get us fathers involved. But when it came to a stroller, I felt like I wanted a much bigger input into our final purchase and became more actively involved. I remember checking ours out, comparing it to other double strollers, calculating their strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out the best one to buy. I even remember buying this one because I actually had to do it myself since my wife was on bed rest at the time. I don’t know how many times I called her from the Buy Buy Baby in Manhattan worried about whether I was getting the right sheets or diaper genie.

After our kids were born, it was too cold, and they were too small, to take outside for anything except doctor’s appointments. But when the weather warmed a bit, I remember the first time we took them to the park, in their double stroller, all bundled up. Jordyn slept the entire time, but Elijah was wide awake and one of the best pictures we have of him is from that day, with an incredible smirk on his face. We knew then he was going to be a pretty good looking child.

I can remember anytime we went somewhere together that I always wanted to push the stroller, partly to give my wife a break, but also because there was something about pushing them that helped me feel like I was doing something important for them, that I was doing something fatherlike. That was a big deal for me because I didn’t feel much like a father in those early days and thought that meant there was something wrong with me.

But the best part of the stroller for me was the incredible sense of pride I felt pushing the stroller – especially when I was by myself with them, while everyone would stop us to admire how cute our little twins were. “Yup, I’m their Daddy.” In the beginning those were some of the best feelings I associated with being a father.

I remember when we moved to the suburbs and put the stroller in the back of our car. We never took it out (even when we needed to like when we went to Costco and had too much stuff). That double stroller sat in the back of our car day in and day out for over a year, always there when we needed it.

I remember, once our children had started walking, that my wife and I would ask each other if we should bring the stroller? Ironically, she often wanted to and I often didn’t. I felt it was cumbersome, a burden. Let’s let our children run free now that they can, I believed. I also felt it was so hard to relate to them because we would be pushing them from behind and couldn’t see their faces or hear them when they talked.

One day, in the past few months, one of us took the stroller out of the back of the car and it never got put back. There is no way to tell the date of when we last used it or even thought we needed our double stroller, but its days are over and it sits in our basement like an old racehorse put out to pasture with nothing to do, no longer able to serve its purpose, to do what it was built to do.

Considering how much I wanted to stop using the stroller, I find myself particularly surprised at my reaction. Shouldn’t I be happy it is no longer an issue? But to me the stroller symbolized my children’s babyhood, a difficult time in my life as a father, yet also a time that will never return. Our children are getting older and older every day, but it is only moments like this when we really notice. For my wife, it is every time they outgrow their adorable clothing. For me, it is no longer needing or even being able to use the double stroller, the first real twin purchase we made, the first real admission that we were getting two instead of one. Now the stroller sits where my wife and I spend our time together after our children have gone to sleep, intruding on our time, reminding me of how it is all moving so fast.

Where does the time go? How can I make it slow down?

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

While I have written many articles on what it feels like to leave my three year old twins to go to work or the challenges I’ve faced in helping them to sleep on their own during the night, I have been avoiding one particular subject that is a major part of our lives. The main reason I have avoided the subject is that I am so uncomfortable by the whole discussion. I have actually handled helping our twin 3-year olds learn to use the potty better than I thought I would – especially considering the issues and major levels of discomfort I feel, but that doesn’t mean I like talking about it.

In my family, no one ever went to the bathroom. In fact, in my own mind, if people knew that I went to the bathroom (as if they don’t already), they would see me as less of a person, as if going to the bathroom is a weakness, a flaw in my being, as if the whole world doesn’t do it every single day, too. I have worked hard to get comfortable actually going to the bathroom and trying not to care whether other people know or not. But talking about it with other people, well, that’s a whole other issue.

If it wasn’t for my wife, I would probably have made essentially no progress on this issue. Ironically (or maybe, fortunately), I married a sexuality educator and she has no issues about this stuff whatsoever. In fact, she has the opposite of issues in this area, she has strengths and skills that she is (unknowingly) teaching me. Of course, there is also something about changing diapers every day that is like trial by fire – you either get used to dealing with poop and pee or you crack under the pressure running and screaming to the nearest mental institution. In the early days we were always feeding and changing diapers, about every three hours or so (yes, that was about 12-14 diaper changes a day). The only way to stop changing diapers was to stop feeding them and, as you can imagine, we didn’t think that was a good approach to the problem.

Of course, as our children get older I am constantly challenged to grow as well. Once I got used to changing diapers and talking about pee and poop, then we had to talk about what kinds of poops they were. How many times a day is it happening? Then we started with helping our kids understand that we don’t use diapers, we use the…toilet. Ugh, I hate the whole terminology of this. Really. I am cringing as I write this – my fingers are afraid to touch the keyboard since I wrote that word.

The women in our family, their mother, Tia, Nana, and Abuelita, all would let our children into the bathroom with them to help show them how people use a toilet. It took me a long time to be able to do that. Long time like months and months, not weeks. I’ve tried to never let anyone know I actually go to the bathroom, to let someone (really two someones) come with me and watch was so far beyond my comfort level it made me anxious just thinking about it.

As in all of these situations, what helped me was the idea that my role as father is more important than anything I feel as a person. My children need to see their father go to the bathroom, too, that both men and women use the bathroom and that men use it differently than women. Who else is going to show that to my son if not me? I have to rise to that challenge even if it makes me terribly uncomfortable, because it is not about me, it is about them.

Interestingly, despite our best efforts, our children had refused to participate in toilet education. They didn’t really mind diapers (though they hated having them changed – if it was up to them, they would just wear them all day regardless of whether they were wet or dry, empty or full), they didn’t care about how they looked in them, they didn’t have much interest in being like us. We tried so many different techniques, including flat-out bribery and nothing was working. Finally, on the same day, but separately, my wife and I concocted a new plan (in case you haven’t noticed, parenting is so much about problem solving – one of the things I actually like about it). We were going to let Elijah off the hook since he often doesn’t respond well to pressure and focused on Jordyn since she does and she likes the limelight, likes challenges and rewards. This approach worked and once Jordyn got it, Elijah came along shortly thereafter.

Of course, with Jordyn using the potty, I find myself sitting next to my little girl while she is peeing and/or pooping, encouraging her, congratulating her, helping her to clean herself, and even cleaning out the potty (more cringing) after she is done. How did this happen? What have I become?

I have become a man who understands that to be the kind of father I want to be, I need to be more than I am, I need to be what they need me to be. It is even more important because I don’t want them to carry my issues about this subject. I don’t want them cringing or uncomfortable about something that they will do several times a day. My children need their father to help show them how to use the toilet, they need both of their parents to show that using the bathroom, talking about pee and poop and toilet are okay, they are just words like any other.

What’s amazing is the more I say them, the more that becomes true.

This column originally began life as a Two Okapis post. I realized I was writing about so many aspects of my life as a father – except dealing with my children’s bodily functions. The reason? I hated thinking about it, let alone talking about it. I’m better at it now and it all started with just saying the words.

Without the possibility of turning to my parental role-models as a guide for what I want to give my children, I found that I looked externally for help in blazing a new parental trail. What I didn’t realize was that the answers were always inside me, revealing themselves only after my twins were born.

Most people learn much of what they know about parenting from their own parents. This provides people with role models and blueprints for the kind of parents they want to be. For those of us with parents who didn’t do such a good job or who weren’t around, there are no role models, no blueprints, no way to know if we’re doing okay or not. This is why I turned to external sources. It is why I always hoped there was a Parenting Handbook that would be given to me upon the birth of my children. Alas, when my children were born the only books I received were the kind with lots of pictures and pages that don’t rip (though they can still be chewed, I learned). Without a blueprint, without a trail to follow, I have found there is no way to tell if I’m doing a good job or not. What if I’m screwing up and don’t even realize it? I joke about starting a therapy fund, but maybe I should really worry less about funding my retirement and start monthly transfers to that account.

I have spent much of my life trying to unlearn what I learned from my parents, and it has left me feeling a void. It is very hard to not be something. Being able to follow a path is much easier than creating your own path and that is what my wife and I find ourselves trying to do. We have a pretty good idea of the kind of people we hope our children will be, but it is at the details where everything gets fuzzy and scary.

Every night after I put our children to bed, I walk down the stairs and wonder if we are doing a good job. Actually, I’m pretty sure my wife is, but am not so sure about myself. Having unhealthy parents has also left me no one to talk to about parenting. I can’t ask my Dad what he did when I or my sister couldn’t sleep through the night – he most likely wasn’t there or has no memory. I can’t ask my mother because she doesn’t talk to me, hasn’t for about 17 years. Being isolated from my parents makes me feel isolated as a parent, as if I am in this all by myself. Feeling that isolated also makes it hard to really feel sure I’m doing a good job. Raising two children at exactly the same time only makes matters more complicated. Am I giving more to one than the other? Sure, having twins may bring double the joy, but is also doubles my questions and feelings of doubt.

This continued significantly up until about the time my children started learning how to talk. When they first started to be able to sit up, I began to feel this very powerful connection with each of them. As they started moving around and reacting to things I did, the connection only grew stronger. But when they started to be able to talk, I realized so much about the kind of father I was and wanted to be.

“Daaaaaaaaddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

What I never understood before I had children in my search for answers outside myself, was the power of that word, the power of being called Daddy by little beings who came to mean the absolute world to me. When they call out for me in pain because they got hurt, I don’t need a handbook to tell me to run to them. When they call out “Daddy” in the morning, I don’t need a parenting class to tell me they are ready for me to bring them downstairs to start our morning together and make them breakfast. When I come home from work, and they come running saying “Daddy’s home,” I don’t need good role models to know to relish the moment and hold onto the hug for as long as they let me. I never understood so much of being a father is based on who I am and the love I feel for my children.

Finally, after being a parent to twins for almost four years (which must equal like eight years of parenting), I have realized three major things that help me deal with blazing my own path.

1. My goal should not be to give them the childhood I never had. It is to provide for them what they need, to end the cycle of difficult childhoods, the negative momentum my parents couldn’t stop and begin pushing all future generations of Schneiders into a positive direction. I won’t be perfect, can’t be perfect. But I can give my children a gift of unconditional love, support and affection. In any family history that would be a gigantic step forward.
2. Awareness of what I went through is absolutely vital. I need to know what my parents did and their parents did and their parents, what I learned and absorbed from them about being a parent and about relating to my children. This is the only way I have been able to affect any change. We all have said something to our children and felt ourselves channeling our parents. Imagine how many times we do that but are not aware of it. Awareness helps me to be different than what I experienced.
3. Continual personal growth helps me to be what I want to become. I have worked very hard to develop new skills, new ways of communicating, to challenge myself to overcome the things with which I am uncomfortable. Every single step I take, every personal challenge I overcome, means that my children will have it that much easier than I did, will have the head start they deserve.

For those of us blazing new trails as parents – especially paths that are very different from what our parents followed, without any handbook or parenting class to guide us, it is a very challenging experience. The trail is riddled with thorn bushes, sharp rocks sticking out of the ground and large boulders in our way. We can’t repair generations of troubled families in one fell swoop, but we can begin that process with our children. The best way to begin that process is by focusing on unconditional love for our children, on being aware of what we went through, and continuing to grow ourselves, by becoming healthier physically, emotionally and mentally. If I keep doing this, I know my children will not need to look externally for how to be a good parent like I did; they will have me and my wife as good role models to help guide them.

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

“Twinkle, twinkle?” our almost two-and-a-half year old son, Elijah, asked.

“You want to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Elijah?” his mother asked.

“Yeah,” he responded in his soft voice.

It was dinner time at the Schneider family household and as soon as Elijah started to sing, we stopped talking, straining to listen to his quiet, high-pitched singing voice.

“Twinkle twinkle little star.”

He wasn’t looking up at us, but down at the table where the food he wasn’t eating sat on his plate, abandoned.

“How I wonder what you are.”

My son loves music. He loves singing and he loves dancing. Music seems to have a healing affect on him, the way it has always had on his Dad. Last week he had to spend a terrible night in the hospital emergency room, a victim of a nasty stomach virus that had been making the rounds leaving him terribly dehydrated. On the way home the next morning, sitting limply in his car seat, as if all of the air had been expelled from him, he asked for “Soul Sister?” When we put the song on, Lady Marmalade, Elijah, though not having eaten anything in almost 24 hours and exhausted from a whole night in the emergency room, started singing along with Christina Aguilera, Pink, and Missy Eliot. My wife and I looked at each other with a smile, knowing he was going to be just fine, slightly awed by how much alike he and I can be. Music, for us, can be like energy, giving us fuel to deal with whatever lies ahead.

But as much as he loves music, the only time he sings without music is when he is singing “Happy Birthday.” He has never sung at the dinner table like this before.

“Up above the world so high.”

My wife, our goddaughter and myself were straining to hear him even though he was only a couple of feet away. His voice was so soft and seemed so delicate as if somehow it might break at any moment if we weren’t careful.

“Crust? I got crust!” Elijah’s twin sister, Jordyn, interrupted. Not used to being the one offstage, she seemed to be trying to refocus our attention.

“Like a diamond in the sky.”

“Elijah’s got mucous. A big one.” She was pointing at him now and finally I had to turn to her and put my finger to my mouth and say, “Shhhh…Elijah’s singing,” I whispered to her. She then put her finger to her mouth mimicking my actions, but remained quiet.

“Twinkle twinkle little star.” It felt like we were all holding our breath at this point. Jordyn had stopped talking and all you could hear at the dinner table was the sound of our little boy’s voice. No one was eating the pizza anymore. Nobody was drinking their water. All of us were intent on watching and listening to a first, something we had never seen before. Sometimes in life you know you’re experiencing a special moment while you’re actually experiencing it and we all knew this was one of those moments.

“How I wonder what you are.”

We started to applaud and tell Elijah how great he was and what a great voice he has – we’re big on positive reinforcement in the Schneider family.

But something was wrong.

As we congratulated him, I was watching his face and it was literally breaking in front of my eyes. My God, I thought to myself, he’s going to start crying. He’s really upset.

When our family first celebrated Shabbat on Friday nights, after we lit the candles and blessed our children, we would wish each other “Shabbat Shalom” and give each other a kiss and a hug. When we would give Elijah a kiss, his face would do exactly what he did at the dinner table after he had finished singing. It looked as if he was realizing that something terrible was happening and the heartbreak he felt was first revealed in his face, before the tears began to exit his eyes and the cries flew from his mouth and lungs. What made a difference was realizing he thought we were kissing goodbye and that we were all leaving him. From then on when we kissed him, we reminded him we weren’t leaving and before long he understood what was happening.

“What’s wrong?” my wife asked, realizing as well that Elijah was getting upset. She was sitting right next to him, but I had a better view of his face from across the table. His heartbreak was showing full force in his face and I had no idea what had happened.

“Can you give him a hug?” I asked my wife. She quickly got him out of his booster seat, just as he started to cry out loud. She picked him up and held him in her arms as he cried.

I walked over behind my wife, knelt down so Elijah and I could look at each other eye-to-eye and held his hand.

“No Daddy.”

I let go of his hand and gave him a kiss on his forehead.

“No Daddy. No!

I stopped and just looked at him while my wife held him.

“No Daddy. Go sit down. Sit down!”

“I just wanted to let you know I love you, Elijah.”

“No Daddy. Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!”

I returned to my seat and I am certain the same heartbreak that showed on his face was exactly what I was feeling at that moment.

“What’s wrong with Elijah?” my little girl asked.

“I don’t know, Jordyn. I don’t know.” I watched my wife hold Elijah, zoning off, my eyes seeing the two of them but my mind replaying him yelling at me to go back to my seat, away from him, because he didn’t want my comfort.

What had happened? How did this beautiful family moment of pride and accomplishment end with the two males in the family in pain?

I believe something about music and the power it holds for father and son played a major factor in Elijah getting upset. Music can be pure emotional expression, a way to share our innermost feelings in a way that feels safe. Elijah, an incredibly sensitive boy as it is (also very much like his father), had never really experienced music in that way. I believe he was completely caught off guard by how vulnerable he felt, how exposed he was, and when we reacted with such jubilation it startled him immensely, shaking him to his core because he had made himself completely vulnerable to us. Even though our reaction was positive, it was so shocking to his emotional state that he was overwhelmed and when we get overwhelmed, crying is a good way to deal with it sometimes. And that’s why he needed me to go back to my seat. In his fragile state, order was even more vital to him. My wife believes that there are times that Elijah requires everything to be in its place. Specific times in his life where order is more important than all else. She thinks that is especially true at the dinner table. She is right, of course, though I hadn’t understood it until that night. At these times, when things aren’t in their proper place, he gets upset. It was even more important for everything to be in its proper place – including me – because he probably felt everything inside of him was way out of sorts. It’s the same reasoning why many of us clean when our lives feel out of control. At the time, though, all I knew was that somehow my best intentions only ended up upsetting him more.

However, later that same night, my two children, my wife and myself were all gathered on the couch to read books before it was time for them to go into their cribs. On most nights, Elijah would fight to sit on Mommy’s lap, but this night, despite everything we had been through, Elijah wanted to sit with me, “Sit with Daddy?” My wife and I exchanged a questioning glance, ‘Where was this coming from?’ As we were reading the last book, Elijah leaned his head on my arm in a gesture of affection I don’t think I had ever experienced from him before. My heart seemed to start working double time and my vision got a little blurry from the tears welling up. I put my hand gently on his head and wondered if my gesture to comfort him at dinner had maybe had a positive effect after all. After we put them into their cribs, I marveled at the emotional roller coaster of an evening we had. Just when I thought I had caused him terrible harm, when I felt utterly unnecessary or even worse in his life, he leaned his head on my arm, generating a warmth that put most of my doubts to rest.

Inspiration for this column: I think all parents have a moment that was so profound, so impacting that they know they will never forget. This was mine, an emotional roller coaster of an evening, with Elijah. Sometimes the things we do to comfort our children has a delayed impact, but that doesn’t mean it has any less meaning for them.