Walk this way

There are only two pieces of parenting advice I ever give new parents (unless someone begs for more): Every child is different. Don’t be in a hurry for your child to walk.

Suddenly I’m having trouble keeping my own counsel.

Oliver, who is otherwise completely healthy and maniacally active, refuses to be interested in walking. At 14 months old, he only recently began to allow Anastazya to walk him around by his hands. He still complains when I try to walk him.

So now the two halves of my brain are at war. There’s the rational half, the one that tells me this is a good thing. As wild as Ollie can be, Ollie on legs will really be a handful.

Then there’s the ultra-competitive sports half of my brain. Now maybe you’re not a neurologist and you’re wondering if I have made up a new half of the human brain. I have not. I may have renamed it (I think it used to be called the ultra-competitive hunting obsessed half) but I definitely did not invent it.

This half has served me well in many parts of my life, including job hunting, ping-pong and developing a knuckleball after the age of 30. It can also be a hinderance as this is the half that tells me I still have a shot at a professional tennis career, that it can’t be that hard to write a screenplay and that it is possible to win an argument with my wife.

It’s also the part of my brain that wants to put pressure on Oliver to succeed in sports in ways I never did. This is the part of the brain that, if left unchecked, makes parents stand at the fence in a Little League game and scream at their children, other people’s children and the umpire.

But it’s not all bad. These bizarre neural pathways also cause normally sane people to coach Little League teams, to teach ballet to 4-year-olds and to sit on the sidelines of an all-day swim meet so they can cheer on their child for two minutes of a single race.

The problem is that this part of my brain is emboldened by things like Ollie throwing a ball with his left hand or Ollie picking up a tennis ball and smiling. I start having thoughts like, “At what age should he learn to throw a curveball?” and “Should I be his tennis coach, or should I hire somebody?” I know this isn’t normal or even remotely healthy, but I have little or no control.

So when my game brain sees Oliver crawling at 14 months old, it screams, “No! No! No! How can we work on his serve-and-volley if he can’t stand?!?!”

What half of my brain will win? Will I be a relaxed Dad in the stands or will I be splicing highlight tapes of his Pee-Wee football games? There’s really no way to know. Of course, I haven’t been able to make Ollie do a single thing I have wanted him to do in the first 14 months of his life, so the all-controlling sports Dad route isn’t looking too plausible.

Still, as I write this, I stare outside into the unusually cold and gray May day and my eyes wander down to our backyard. I’m pretty sure I could fit a tennis court back there. Or at least a batting cage.

I am a horrible person

Something happened this weekend that officially eliminated me from Father of the Year contention. It was so stunning and so alarming that for once I’m glad that my readership is embarrassingly minuscule.

My son chipped a tooth. Actually, it’s bigger than a chip. I would officially call it a broken tooth. But that’s neither the stunning nor the alarming part of the story.

Here’s the plot twist: We had no idea how, or when, it happened.

Now that’s some great parenting!

First, we went through the usual suspects. “Let’s see…he was eating gravel this morning, that can’t be it. He was swinging a 2×4 at Anastazya this afternoon, but her teeth are fine. He got into a fight with a Hell’s Angel, but I’m pretty sure the guy wasn’t using a chain.”

Needless to say, we were stumped.

We went into homicide detective mode and were able to deduce a likely scenario. Apparently, he fell at a grandparent’s house Sunday morning but the report was mild: no blood and minimal crying. In fact, we still aren’t 100 percent sure that it happened that way.

The point is, if it did happen then, we didn’t notice it until almost 12 hours later. And if didn’t happen then, that means we did something, or allowed something to be done, to our son that sufficiently violent enough to break his tooth without our knowledge.

I really don’t know what to think about myself and my parenting skills now. Clearly, my attention to detail needs some sharpening. I can’t imagine missing something like this when I just had the one offspring.

Then again, she is a girl. And Oliver is all boy. And don’t think that doesn’t make a huge difference. Or maybe it’s just this girl and this boy. Because this boy likes to lead with his head.

Either way, we probably need to put the hospital on speed dial. I should have plenty of time now that I don’t have to clear space on my mantel for that Father of the Year Award.

There’s always next year.