Three Tips On Making These The Best Times To Be A Parent
Jeff Nelligan • April 26, 2020
As my Army Drill Sergeant used to say:
"Don’t count the days, make the days count."
There are two types of parents today.
The first is the Dad or Mom who is hurting; a lost job and strained finances and general despair. I emphasize I’ve been there. I work in politics and several times my candidates have been on the south side of an election. When that happens, you’re abruptly fired and you’re soon thin in the wallet. There’s only one way out: Grind on. Keeping reaching out, keep calling, keep looking, and keep driving. As my old Army drill sergeant used to yell at my platoon: “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”
Either type of parent can become the third type of parent: The one that understands that this is the best time ever to be a Dad or Mom. Why? Because the kids are around and you have time - time with them that you never had before and may never have again.
Check out my book – Four Lessons from My Three Sons: How You Can Raise Resilient Kids.
The first is the Dad or Mom who is hurting; a lost job and strained finances and general despair. I emphasize I’ve been there. I work in politics and several times my candidates have been on the south side of an election. When that happens, you’re abruptly fired and you’re soon thin in the wallet. There’s only one way out: Grind on. Keeping reaching out, keep calling, keep looking, and keep driving. As my old Army drill sergeant used to yell at my platoon: “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”
The second is the Dad or Mom working at home and is beginning to go nuts because they’re balancing work and their kids are around all the time. Every person in the house has run out of things to do and every day is a slow march to dinner and beyond.
Either type of parent can become the third type of parent: The one that understands that this is the best time ever to be a Dad or Mom. Why? Because the kids are around and you have time - time with them that you never had before and may never have again.
Yes, hard to believe, but these unusual times are a gift. Use these moments now to get to know your kid in ways that will last way beyond this temporary setback, for years and years to come.
To come back to the first type of parent, hurting and angry: It takes a strong will to overcome adversity. I know. I didn’t think I was capable of mustering it but I did. And when I did, I became that third type of parent:
1. All Time With a Kid is Quality Time: The Bleacher Report
Most Dads know it takes effort to spend unrushed and undistracted time with your son. You’re grinding at work all week, your kid is at school, there are after-school activities, he’s got homework, it’s now 8 p.m. and you’re already thinking about tomorrow. It’s the iron grip of the Schedule. Now that iron grip is broken. It was sure broken for me when I was jobless. Even though I was anxious about finding work, I hid it from my kids and got a grip on the perpetual motion machine of normal times, i.e., when Dad is headed off every morning in a suit and tie to work.
How? I sat my three sons down and laid it out the only way I know how: With the unflinching truth. “Ok gents, we all know it’s bad right now. It won’t last forever but one thing will: Beginning today, we are making a schedule for when we spend time together.” From the web, I had downloaded copies of a blank office calendar for the rest of this year.
“We’re going into a hard routine. We’ll mark specific days and times until the end of the year when each of you individually spend time with me, no other brothers and no distractions. There’s only one rule: Each of you better be prepared to talk.”
Over time, this became unofficially known as the Bleacher Report. I and the designated son would grab snacks from home and normally go to the fields at the local high school, which on any given Saturday morning is one of the most peaceful places on the planet. If you can’t do that now, improvise. We’d throw around a football or lacrosse ball or a baseball for an hour, run sprints goal line to goal line and afterwards, sprawl across several rows of bleacher benches (hence the term) and just talk.
It was simple – I’d think up some topics to draw him out and then we’d slide into the rundown: How’d the week go? Name one big success, one big fail. Ok, here’s what happened in the old man’s week; ask me two questions about it. What’s coming up that makes you nervous, confident? Or we’d play the Fave Game: What’s your fave movie, car, cheeseburger, and teacher and why? There were zero distractions; the phones were left in car, there were no brothers to interrupt - just the fields stretching before us as our conversation graduated from everyday stuff to serious stuff.
This routine never varied. As the years went on, the conversations became more important inasmuch as the boys were wrestling with academics and sports and friends and the college matters.
The Bleacher report never ever ended. My middle kid was home from a deployment to the Persian Gulf this last Christmas and I’ll let you guess where Saturday found us. We talked as long and casually about his ship’s exploits with Iranian patrol boats as a decade earlier we had talked about the games of his 8th grade football team.
2. The Year in Review
When I was a stay-at-home Dad – that is, staying at home because I had no job to go to - in between husting for work, I took part in the All-American Pastime: Cleaning out the house. In fact, that’s what a lot of people are doing right now. I bet like me, they are going through every room, prowling the basement and attic and garage, opening boxes and closets and discovering treasures on once-unknown shelves. I guarantee that a lot of the stuff they are finding is kid-related. I did. That’s because every kid produces a record. And by that I mean: schoolwork, art drawings (yes, from when they were four-years old), photos from the last soccer season and winter swim meets and the family vacation; a program from the college football game that he insists on keeping; the Earth Day report with glued leaves and twigs; test papers and report cards and the certificate from the Science Fair and the community newspaper article with his name in it. I could go on but you get it. Like many parents, I’ve held onto it all.
Now is the time for you to rummage through it all. Go through all this kid flotsam and then carefully sorted it, making a stack for each kid. Photos and other docs that have been on your computer for years? I printed them all out.
Then, when I was surrounded by stacks for each kid, I sorted it all out, placing the items in plastic sheet protectors and adding to each a date and a whimsical note. All was inserted in a three-ring binder for each kid, on which the front was written, “The Year in Review.” Yeah, a scrapbook. You think that’s nuts? Keep reading.
The binders were a hit with my three sons; they will be with your kids. This was an entire year of page-by-page good memories and surprisingly, they were pored over throughout the year by the boys.
Indeed, the Year binders are ongoing. I save photos and emails they’ve sent and news clippings about the regions of the world they are in and put it together every year, it’s a constant and colorful reminder of what they had achieved.When the eldest kid, out of college, was at home carefully packing his gear for a Naval deployment in the Far East, I offhandedly asked him what he was taking. “One of the Years.” he said simply. “When I get homesick, I’ll pull it out.”
3. Get outside!
For goodness sake, GET OUTSIDE! Oh, AND AWAY FROM SCREENS! Yes, this is hardly original. But you can never do it enough. And here are some ways to change it up. No electronics permitted beyond the front and back doors! Walk through the neighborhoods and parts of your community you’ve never seen. Use this as an opportunity to tell them about your neighborhood and you life growing up as a kid. I guarantee this will spark the kid’s curiosity. Hey, you’ve got a captive audience and for now, you have all the time in the world.
In the backyard, throw balls - baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse – but just not back and forth. Challenge the kid by making it a competition. Ten times without a drop, five times opposite hand. 20 times in 30 seconds. And if want to jazz it up, put some minor money on it – 50 cents, a dollar. Have push up and sit up contests and other unusual events. How far you can walk with a book balanced on your head? How many times can you hop on one foot? Yeah, all sounds crazy.
Well, I did it all and it provided some of the most fun moments I even spent with my sons.
Last, I’m like a lot of you – working at home now and my youngest is home from West Point while the other two remain deployed on the outposts of the world. Nellie Junior has schoolwork but we have plenty of time together and sometimes I’ll tell him, Ok pal, this evening we’re gonna sit in the front room and read quietly for an hour. Then, you tell me about what you’ve read and I’ll do the same. You see, you can make even the simplest things come alive.
Sure these are odd times. Whatever your situation right now – and I’m darn familiar with both - be that third type of parent. None of us will ever again have this freedom and closeness to our kids. Don’t fall into the trap of going through the motions and wishing for it all to end and “normal” to ensue. Because my drill sergeant had another saying: Don’t count the days. Make the days count.
#####Check out my book – Four Lessons from My Three Sons: How You Can Raise Resilient Kids.
Ok, any easy pitch. This gem is only 60-pages long, a 45-minute read, hard and fast and funny. It tells the story of how I raised my kids and propelled them to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams College, and West Point. It’s a step-by-step guide on how to develop boys who are steadfast in conduct, character, and ambition.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Every Dad in America wants to raise a resilient kid.
Four Lessons from My Three Sons charts the course.
Written by a good-natured but unyielding father, this slim volume describes how his off-beat and yet powerful forms of encouragement helped his sons obtain the assurance, strength and integrity needed to achieve personal success and satisfaction. This book isn't 300 pages of pop child psychology or a fatherhood "journey" filled with jargon and equivocation. It's tough and hard and fast. It’s about how three boys made their way to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams, and West Point – and beyond.
Musing on the practical wisdom of Four Lessons from My Three Sons
Stephen Borelli USA Today/January 6, 2024
Camaraderie, shared interests and personal discipline
How you can end the digital addiction nightmare
The Year in Review
Which means always show up.
“All these good guys are sitting in these office buildings, staring at screens and wondering, ‘What in the hell am I doing here?’”
“‘Diversity. Justice. Inclusiveness.’ Yeah, don’t forget GPA, SATs, All-Conference.”
Doing not dreaming. Getting the small stuff right.
Pictured above: Brock Purdy (with Nellie pal, Roz), the 262nd and last pick of the 2022 NFL Draft. "Mr. Irrelevant" grinds his way to the Super Bowl two years later.