This Father's Day I'm left to my own devices while the Wif and Little Dude are at her parents. I am, naturally, working this weekend. Which I'm okay with, I guess. I get to catch up on sleep (in theory) and maybe I'll get one of those colossal hugs my progeny so seldom doles out after long periods of separation. So that's something to look forward to.
In the meantime, I get to thumb through my early Father's Day present, a wondrous little book called The Dangerous Book for Boys. It's got lots of neat stuff for cultivating what I've affectionately dubbed "a gentlemanly scamp." Most of the information is just neat or fun things for young kids (boys or girls) to do on their own. The perfect paper airplane. Building a soapbox car from scrap. Famous battles. How to identify tons of stuff.
Then again, there's also how to make a pressure plate warning device, fashion your own bow and arrow, and make your clothes fireproof. Which guarantees supervised usage of the danger-zone red tome.
But in the meantime, I've decided on this, my fifth Father's Day (we'd found out Little Dude was coming between Mother's Day and Father's Day, so I've gotten a holiday up on![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ne_today), I've decided I need to set unreasonable expectations for my son. And then chart his failure so that I can remind him and all his peers just how much of a disappointment he is to me.
And by unreasonable, I mean that boy should be able to levitate or shoot lasers from his eyes by the time he's seven. SEVEN DAMMIT! You've got three and a half years 'til you're eight, kid! Lasers. Get to work on them.
In an ideal setting, I'd want a Nobel Prize by the time he's ten, but with kids and their blatant disregard for things that were better when I was younger, I'll let him skate (do kids still do that?) by until he's twelve. I know once that future slacker gets into junior high his potential will be shot.
I do however have a strict deadline for when he must build his own robot doppleganger, which is eight years of age. If there's a kid building a cold fusion generator in his basement at the age of fourteen, I expect robots by the day he turns eight. What kid couldn't do that with the InterNetz around? A failure, that's who!
That's all I've really got for now, but don't worry, it's an organic list meant to expand as the boy's skillsets emerge and then pulverize his self-esteem when I demand otherwise. You may think I'm joking, or that I'll forget, but you're wrong. He deserves to have lasting scars and trauma the same as me, and since violence is sooooooo frowned upon these days, it'll just have to be of the emotional variety.
Hey, blame society that I can't beat my kid!
;-)
...good god do I talk a lot...
In the meantime, I get to thumb through my early Father's Day present, a wondrous little book called The Dangerous Book for Boys. It's got lots of neat stuff for cultivating what I've affectionately dubbed "a gentlemanly scamp." Most of the information is just neat or fun things for young kids (boys or girls) to do on their own. The perfect paper airplane. Building a soapbox car from scrap. Famous battles. How to identify tons of stuff.
Then again, there's also how to make a pressure plate warning device, fashion your own bow and arrow, and make your clothes fireproof. Which guarantees supervised usage of the danger-zone red tome.
But in the meantime, I've decided on this, my fifth Father's Day (we'd found out Little Dude was coming between Mother's Day and Father's Day, so I've gotten a holiday up on
ne_today), I've decided I need to set unreasonable expectations for my son. And then chart his failure so that I can remind him and all his peers just how much of a disappointment he is to me.And by unreasonable, I mean that boy should be able to levitate or shoot lasers from his eyes by the time he's seven. SEVEN DAMMIT! You've got three and a half years 'til you're eight, kid! Lasers. Get to work on them.
In an ideal setting, I'd want a Nobel Prize by the time he's ten, but with kids and their blatant disregard for things that were better when I was younger, I'll let him skate (do kids still do that?) by until he's twelve. I know once that future slacker gets into junior high his potential will be shot.
I do however have a strict deadline for when he must build his own robot doppleganger, which is eight years of age. If there's a kid building a cold fusion generator in his basement at the age of fourteen, I expect robots by the day he turns eight. What kid couldn't do that with the InterNetz around? A failure, that's who!
That's all I've really got for now, but don't worry, it's an organic list meant to expand as the boy's skillsets emerge and then pulverize his self-esteem when I demand otherwise. You may think I'm joking, or that I'll forget, but you're wrong. He deserves to have lasting scars and trauma the same as me, and since violence is sooooooo frowned upon these days, it'll just have to be of the emotional variety.
Hey, blame society that I can't beat my kid!
;-)
...good god do I talk a lot...
