Natural Sweetener

Some changes in life simply cannot be helped, especially as a parent of a child with food allergies.  Like most families struggling with dietary restrictions relating to severe allergies, we were completely blindsided when we were forcibly granted lifetime membership.  When you factor in environmental and pet allergies, the situation is irrevocably compounded.  Not only were we blissfully ignorant of the harsh reality of anaphylaxis, we were completely dismissive of the possibility that we could be directly affected.

Before I go any further, I should start by disclosing that I'm not much of a fan of pancakes.  Despite preferring waffles, I do not own a waffle iron and haven't for years.  Consequently, I rarely have any need for syrup, thus I rarely have any syrup in my home.  My wife, oddly enough, makes fantastic pancakes from batter she makes from scratch.  And though they are quite good, my wife almost never cooks anything because I do most of the cooking, thus her pancakes rarely see the hot side of a skillet.  She has made her special pancakes occasionally for my daughter, who loves them as well as the obligatory accompaniment of syrup.  In retrospect, it's the syrup my daughter probably loves the most.  Unfortunately, life-saving dietary restrictions have further limited the presence of pancakes and syrup in our home.

Living in a household struggling with dietary restrictions forced my wife and I to make many changes to our food choice tendencies.  We had to become experts at reading food labels and ingredient lists because lives were quite literally depending on it.  As we reevaluated our food choices, we realized that fewer ingredients meant fewer opportunities for cross-contamination and unnecessary processing, thus were safer to bring into our home.  We switched to many organic products as a result, and ended up with honey in our cupboards in the form of one of those squeezable, bear-shaped bottles when my wife purchased some to sweeten her coffee and tea.  Since I have no sweet tooth, I thought nothing more of the purchase until my wife brought out the squeeze-bear honey for some evening tea.  For some reason, our daughter (who was five years old at the time) was staring intently at my wife.  My wife and I exchanged meaningful looks, but before we could ask what was wrong, our daughter spoke up:

"I like bear syrup!"

We broke into instant laughter and struggled mightily to stifle it to avoid hurting our daughter's feelings.  Luckily, my daughter laughed with us because children sometimes laugh hard when adults do despite not knowing why.  This was one of those times.

How does one explain marketing to their five-year-old daughter?  "That's not syrup," I told her after we had regained most of our composure.  "That's honey.  Your mother is using it to sweeten her tea," I said through a chuckle.  "While I suppose you could use it as syrup, that's not really what it's meant for."

I don't believe in talking down to my children, though their limited experiences in life and general innocence sometimes makes bridging certain gaps a bit of a challenge.  You just need to put it into terms they can relate to:

"You know ‘Winnie The Pooh’ is a bear and likes honey, right?"  I asked her.  She nodded, indicating she was following to that point.  "That's because real bears like honey as well.  Most people know that, so they package them in bear-shaped containers so they can sell more."

Though we could see the wheels churning, leading us to believe she may want to ponder further, her response was quite prompt:

"No.  That's bear syrup," she said with a tone dripping with unwavering conviction that can only come from my wife's daughter.  Her expression was even more resolute than her words and we all burst into hysterics once again.

It’s bear syrup!  Of course it is.

A Fatherhood Perspective

Fatherhood is a shared experience.  We share it with our partners (if we are lucky enough to have one), as well as our children.  There is a brotherhood among fathers as we all have milestones and life events that parallel one another.  Keeping to that theme, it's worth noting that I'm not the first to create a blog about my experiences as a father, nor will I be the last, because all of our shared experiences are uniquely ours, regardless of the parallels.  Beyond the obviousness of variables such as race, religion, and socioeconomics, the variables that provide the most depth for our experiences as fathers are our children.  We have heard plenty about what parents have to say about the experience.  My hope is to provide a voice for my children.

Parental Guidance: words to live by.  We hear these words constantly whether we’re parents or not — but what do these words mean?  If parents are expected to provide guidance, who guides us?  Children are born, but without working instructions.  The reason I say working instructions is because there actually are easily accessible instructions that exist for parenting (this revelation may even be greeted with some optimism).  Unfortunately, those instructions are provided in the form of unwanted advice from your parents and peers who are unwilling to admit they are just as clueless as you are with regard to parenting.  Following available instructions from those around you (or the Internet) can make parenting feel like trying to assemble that new Asian-made toy that comes with a billion pieces all while trying to follow a guide that has been translated a few times before it finally makes its debut in your native tongue, though they’ve clearly been translated by someone without a comprehensive working knowledge of your native tongue.  Confusion and frustration will follow by default — which is pretty much par for the course.

Raising children is a lot like building a house, only from the perspective of an architect or builder trying to learn the craft with on the job training — learn as you go, so to speak.  Although you aren’t likely to try to build something profound that the public relies on without first becoming proficient in the craft (like a skyscraper or suspension bridge), that’s exactly what you’re doing when you become a parent: jumping in with both feet for a round of “sink or swim” that never seems to end.  You may not think comparing the building of an important structure to raising a child is as valid as I would have you believe, but consider this: all world leaders were raised by someone.  What if your child becomes a world leader or does something that the public depends on?  Luck favors the prepared for a reason.

The journey from child to adult is a collection of steps I need to become more familiar with.  Much like the buildings and bridges I've encountered in my travels: some assembly is required.  We'll get there.