We were heading out the door to meet some friends at a playground and our six year old was rarin’ to go. While my wife was still gathering things, he wanted to go outside and wait in the driveway until we were ready to depart.
“It’s a head stop, papa,” he said. “Like a head start but we’re still stopped.”
What a genius term! Here’s hoping he continues to pursue word nerdery like his old man.
The sequence of events this morning:
Continuing my unofficial series on problematic parenting clichés, there’s one I’ve heard a few times recently and must address:
“Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.”
Setting the condescension aside, the idea is that all the challenging aspects of parenting babies and young children—e.g. diaper changes, loss of sleep, tantrums, potting training, keeping them from accidentally killing themselves—aren’t actually challenging compared to what parents of older kids and teenagers have to deal with like adolescent attitude, busy schedules, college applications, and tricky conversations about sex, drugs, technology, and so on.
Respectfully, this is a mound of malarkey.
Obviously I’m slightly biased as the parent of young children. But as a former teenager myself, I’m clear-eyed about the challenges of that phase even if I haven’t yet been on the other side of it. So when I hear an older parent trot out that trite un-truism (which happened to me recently on two separate work calls), I’m inclined to diagnose them with early-onset gramnesia.
Which is understandable. If you’ve been out of this phase for a while, it’s easy to forget what the day-to-day is like. You can look back fondly on the cute pictures and innocent personalities without also feeling the toll of the daily grind that facilitates them. But for us currently in that stage, it’s a big problem if a nap gets skipped or a tantrum derails an outing or a car ride turns traumatic with a screaming toddler. Because all of those things directly affect our everyday life and psychological state.
Just go to any playground and look at the parents. While the ones with older kids (say, ages five and up) are reading or on their phones or otherwise checked out from the action, I am trailing my freshly minted two year old to make sure he doesn’t pick up garbage, try to put said garbage in his mouth, get bowled over by the bigger kids running around, or fall off a high spot on the playground. And this isn’t even overprotective helicopter parenting—it’s just life with a toddler. A joy and adventure, yes, but also constant.
Which is why I teared up at this reel from Oh Crap! author Jamie Glowacki, which validates what I already know to be true: that parenting almost always gets easier the more they age.
If you think little kid problems are small or insignificant compared to yours, then I hate to break it to you but in the grand scheme of things, no one besides you is concerned with your teen’s college search or team practice schedule or social media use.
Being a parent is hard. Period. Different stages present different joys and challenges—not big or small, just different. And if you ever want to gripe about them, no matter the age of your kids, I will validate your feelings and in solidarity send a ✊ or, more likely, a Katniss Everdreen salute. Because we parents always need the odds in our favor.
Ross Barkin ponders what kids of today lack compared to their 20th century predecessors:
When I consider the geniuses of that era—or any, really, before the last ten years or so—I think of time. Talented children, until the incursion of the smartphone and immersive videos games, had much of it.
One big reason for this:
Children could only be enchanted by gizmos and gadgets for so long. The television was stationary, rooted in the living room, and it might have only featured a few channels, depending on the decade. Movies, similarly, were confined to physical theaters. Even in my own childhood, in the 1990s and 2000s, video gaming was largely a social activity. I brought my friend over to play Nintendo Wii or we went to his house to battle in a Dragon Ball Z video game on the PlayStation 2. Unique among my peers, I didn’t own a video game console until I was a teenager, and this meant, to my benefit, I had a childhood free of such seductions.
I too did not own a video game console growing up, except a Game Boy (on which I did spend many maddening hours trying and failing to conquer the Toy Story game). That lack was something I lamented at the time but am grateful for today, because it meant video games weren’t constantly commandeering my time and attention. Instead they were a special occasion, something to be enjoyed with others. I have fond memories having a Halo party with my youth group friends and playing Ready 2 Rumble Boxing with my uncles on a PlayStation rented from Blockbuster.
Barkin spotlights Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys as an example of the kind of genius who had an abundance of time to be able to develop his talent. Then he asks what the Brian Wilsons of 2025 do with their weekends:
Brian was a preternaturally gifted child who deconstructed vocal harmonies on the radio and spent hours over his piano. A child today with such genius might tinker around with music but devote far more of his days to Minecraft, Fortnite, and MrBeast. The child might drown in a sludge bath of AI. The same could be true of the budding novelists, poets, and painters. All of these technologies are arrayed against dreams and imagination. The content—the YouTube, the video games, the TikTok videos—does all the imagining for you. The brain devolves into a vessel for passive consumption.
And that consumption happens (literally) right before their eyes:
For all the obsessing modern parents do over the fates of their children, they’re happy to toss out an iPad or a smartphone or a Nintendo Switch and let their boys and girls melt, slowly, in the blue light. A person close to me once suggested that wardens should start giving prisoners iPhones because there’s nothing that will more rapidly pacify an unruly and restless population. If iPhones were teleported back in time to the twentieth century, would we have a twentieth century?
Pacify, yes, but only temporarily since once you turn it off it’s like trying to quash a prison riot.
A while back we severely curtailed our now six year old’s screen time after finally getting sick of how it was negatively affecting his mood and behavior (and thus everyone else in the house)—not to mention time spent on creative endeavors. What used to happen almost every day after lunch plus some evenings is now maybe an hour on the weekend, and sometime none at all. No iPad, no more YouTube or garbage shows, the N64 every once in a while. Putting the TV away was a big help in removing the temptation, but just as important was holding firm on the boundary. It didn’t take long for him to accept the new normal and find other things to do like coloring/crafts, reading, and listening to Yotos.
Barkin’s post is about kids, but it’s just as applicable to us grownups too. I would benefit immensely from the same screen time limits imposed on my children—not because I’m a nascent genius but because I don’t want to melt in the blue light or drown in a sludge bath of AI either. I too want time enough at last.
More photography here.
We did a gymnastics party for our now 6 year old’s birthday, which his little brother definitely also enjoyed:
2025 America in one star-spangled shot at our local library — gloomy and fractured, with stark contrasts and a cloudy forecast:
Happened to catch this sunsetting light casting shadows from two different windows into our entryway:
Love how Mr. 1 Year Old looks like a gunslinger strolling into a sidewalk showdown with his brother:
Taking in an amphibious view at Shedd Aquarium:
Admiring the Shedd’s dolphins with my own little water lover:
Warming up for soccer class:
While working from home the other day I had my work laptop out at the dining table with my six year old nearby. Since I’m usually hidden away in my home office, this quickly piqued his curiosity. I let him type out a short email I had to send, then opened up Paint and showed him how to use the mouse to select a color and draw.
The result is below. If you squint you can make out his attempt at a smiley face in the lower left corner:
Glad to see MS Paint live on in the next generation…
(Hat-tip to this documentary for the title idea.)
Happy 6th birthday to our firstborn! We celebrated by going out to breakfast and then bringing him bowling for the first time. He got second place with a bumper-assisted 85, while I snuck into first place with a well-timed strike at 95. While it had been about a decade since I’ve played, I also have just never been a good bowler. But that’s OK because it’s still a great thing to do for a date of any kind.
I’m happy to report that the state of one of America’s longtime third places was strong, with a bunch of retirees and families at the bowling alley on a weekday morning. Also happy to report the style and amenities were firmly stuck in 1993, including an Addams Family pinball machine:
During a recent songwriting session with my five year old (i.e. in the six minutes before he got distracted by something else), he improvised these lyrics while I strummed my guitar and took notes:
There’s a maple tree in the meadow
And every winter it’s not making progress
But in the spring, the tree starts growing away
And once you know
It’s taking so
Long to grow
Then you know
There’s a maple tree closeTwigs in the grass
And down below
You might know
Something slow
It’s a mole. Yes it’s a mole, ohhhh
What do you see under the snow?
Why it’s a mole!
So give it a dole
It’s hard to be a mole
Grammy Award when?
See previous year in review posts.
My view from the end of all things 2024:
A red-tailed hawk plopped itself on our backyard power line this morning, making for a colorful breakfast companion on an otherwise gloomy New Year’s Eve. May we all seek to achieve its steady serenity in 2025.
A few highlights from the year:
Somehow the 5 year old has gotten really into Pokémon. He’s never seen the show nor the cards nor the video game, so it must have been from a friend or kid at the playground.
Though I was at the prime age of 12 when it exploded globally and was all the rage among my peers, I never got into it myself. As such, I’ve been rather bewildered now as an adult reading the different character guides and books that are full of names and powers and regions and whoseewhatsees that just wouldn’t appeal to me otherwise. But I’m trying to be a curious elder and follow his interests along with him, knowing full well he (probably) won’t be into Pokémon forever.
A spinoff of an ongoing series
Yotos and Tonies. All day every day. Seriously great screen-free stories, learning, and music for the 5 year old, and something to hold and play with for the 18 month old. Great holiday gifts too for the parents/kids in your life.
Card games. The 5 year old has gotten big into Uno and enjoyed learning others like Old Maid and Slapjack. It’s been fun to watch his strategy evolve to the point where I don’t even have to consider letting him win since he wins plenty on his own.
Board games. While at the library a while back with the 5 year old, on a lark we sat down at their public chess board and I started teaching him the basics. He was hooked, so we got our own teaching set for home. Strategic thinking for chess has taken longer to develop but he’ll get there.
Books. The 18 month old’s current favorites: The Shape of Me and Other Stuff by Dr. Seuss, Find the Duck by Stephen Cartwright, Moimoi—Look At Me! by Jun Ichihara, and more. The 5 year old’s current favorites: the InvestiGators comics series, Pokémon character books, and a variety of library picture books.
The Wild Kratts theme song. Obviously we still watch the show itself often, since it’s usually the 5 year old’s pick for his limited screentime. But for some reason the 18 month old really loves the theme song, so when he gets upset while in the car (which is often), we’ll play a YouTube video that plays the song over and over again. Shoutout to whomever made that video!
Our 5 year old likes to say that a lot when he gets on a roll telling us about something he’s excited about. It could be science facts or recounting a fun outing or his latest playground escapades. He’ll sprinkle it in throughout the story, which shows he’s both excited to share and keen on building some suspense into the telling.
Oh and guess what? It’s so endearing.
More photography here.
Partly cloudy in the Windy City:
Feeling reflective at our park:
Fishing class with the five year old:
First time downtown with the lads:
Enjoying the hotel room balcony at Timber Ridge Lodge:
Burgundy boy blending in with the fallen leaves:
My wife sent me something about the opposition of Saturn last Saturday night, which meant it’d be more visible than usual. While at the library that day I saw they had a monocular telescope for checkout to use with smartphones, so I decided to check it out in case I had the opportunity to try for a shot.
And we did. Before bedtime for our five year old, we managed to catch a glimpse of it between some trees outside our back door. Behold my hasty, heavily magnified iPhone astrophotography:
I kept jumping between regular and night mode and playing with the focus for the best possible shot, and that’s what I managed to get. I told him how special it was that we were able to see it, both due to the astronomical factors and just being alive during a time when Saturn still has its rings (it’ll have to say goodbye in about 100 million years).
Science!
More photography here.
Scenes from some time in Michigan with extended family…
Gas station architecture:
Boatin’:
Cousins dancing to the sunset (also a perfect album cover for their future band):
Happened to catch the sunset reflected near the five year old:
Early morning dune summit:
In between teaching the five year old how to play and then letting him beat me, I absolutely smoked him in a game I’ve played since elementary school:
Some pre-dinner heckling of the granddads on the grill (notice the thumbs-down in the middle lol):
More photography here.
Shadow play:
The tunnel into Brookfield Zoo:
Garbage Day is appointment viewing:
Barking up the front yard tree:
Puddle hunting:
I recently went on a bike ride to the library with my 5 year old. It was the first time he was on his own (training-wheeled) bike instead of riding along in the trailer and it was really fun. He was so jazzed up about it, which caused him to start monologuing his thoughts throughout the entire ride.
Some of those thoughts morphed into what he considers the Rules for Biking, which are as follows:
1. “Always look forward, except when there’s wildlife or really beautiful parks, and you can just look for a second.”
2. “If you get a scrape on your leg, it looks cool. Not too much cool, just still a little bit of cool.”
3. “Everyone who loves biking should stick together.”
Bonus quote: “Ahhhh, don’t you just love having the wind in your face?”
Today I was in the backyard playing tag with our freshly minted 5 year old. He likes when I zig-zag around while he tries to catch me, something he indicated he couldn’t do himself thusly:
“I can only do the zig, not the zag.”
It’s a great line, but it also make me think of another similar iconic quote:
