The Changing Meaning of Birthdays

Today is my 32nd birthday and I sit here, as I imagine many people do, pondering the last 32 years and assessing my life.  I distinctly remember on my 20th birthday, riding the bus around campus while in college thinking what my life might be like in my 30's.  Would I be married by then?  What about kids?  Would I be in the Navy?  Even a momentary thought - would I still be alive?  I don't want this to be a purely sappy look back moment but I think we routinely forget just how fleeting life can be, and that it is important to be ever grateful for the small and large blessings we have been granted.

Now I consider the next 10 years.  What will my life be like in my early 40's.  What job will I have at that time?  Will my kids still run to me with reckless abandon?  Gasp - will I still have my hair?!  All these big and small things come together in one realization.  Birthdays mean something very different as time passes.  As a kid we look forward to them as a way to celebrate with cake, candy, presents and friends while secretly (or not so secretly) hoping for time to pass more quickly so we can finally become a "big person."  As an adult we begin to realize that birthdays (for many people) are actually an acknowledgement that we are still alive and that life is something to be cherished.  I don't fear getting old, I don't fear gray hair, I don't fear the increasing progression of time.  What I do fear is a moment that I hope never happens - the moment I realize I wasted time, cared too much about what other people think, or avoided the path less travelled for the wrong reasons.

Birthdays are ultimately just another date on the calendar, much like the rest.  What makes them special is the way we acknowledge that date as a marker in time and place significance on it in our own way.  32 is going to be a year of reflection and gratitude as I enter what I believe is a new chapter in my life.  I finally feel like a real adult, not just some scared kid pretending to be a grown-up wearing his Dads shoes.  That realization is liberating in many ways - in others it is terrifying.  Here is to another year of excitement, another year of amazing memories, another year of watching my amazing kids grow into the world.  I can only imagine what's in store for the next 10 years - but I am excited to share that time with the people I love and continue with this experiment into adulthood.

Distracted Parenting

We have all been warned of the dangers of distracted driving which usually includes the use of a cell phone while talking or texting, but I am now expanding the category of dangerous cell phone use to distracted parenting.  A recent post on Facebook has garnered over a million shares and thousands of comments.  It shows a sign outside a Texas daycare telling parents to "Get off your phone" during pickup and pay attention to your kids.  While this post has received mixed commentary from parents online - some applaud the concept, others resent the mommy shaming - I believe the intent of the sign has a remarkable amount of validity in our hyper-connected lifestyles.  I personally have witnessed parents doing this exact thing at my daughter's pre-school - ignoring their kids while talking or texting.  As a side note, over half of the parents I see at pick-up where we live are Dads, so the idea that this post was mommy shaming is a little presumptuous.  In my personal life, the post is actually very timely to something my wife and I decided over the past weekend.

I will be the first to admit that I am mildly addicted to social media and news websites.  I find the greater context of the world around me fascinating and, for better or worse, usually can't get enough from these sites. With kids, however, my time to consume online content is considerably more restricted and the internal struggle I have begun to notice is real, especially with so much political discussion.  As a result I personally have found myself ignoring my kids while looking at my phone or asking them to repeat something they said or did because I missed it.  Until recently I didn't realize the effect my "habit" was having on my kids.  My 9 month old tries desperately to grab my phone any chance he gets, more so than any other object, probably because he knows it is important to me so he wants to have it too.  My daughter, who is almost 3, wants YouTube or Netflix on the phone whenever she has a chance.  These acts in themselves are most likely benign and I have no reason to believe I am creating a monster in either of my children but what it does say is that I am missing out on time spent focusing on them, time that I will never get back, time that I imagine I will regret later in life.

My wife has been nice about it, but she reminds me from time to time that I need to put the phone down and focus on the kids more.  I am grateful for her example because she is right - but don't tell her I said that.  As a result, I decided to make a change in our house and take time for our family by purposely disconnecting a little each day.  Our decision was to go back to the world we grew up in. A world where one phone number was the way we connected between homes, a world where technology was a convenience and not a burden, a world where we actually talked to each other instead of texting.  We decided to get a third cell phone line on our plan (which is extremely cheap) and put a simple flip phone in the kitchen as our "home" phone.  Each night we now come home, turn off the iPhones and rid ourselves of the temptation to react with each passing buzz, beep or ring.

The act of turning off that phone between getting home and the next morning is amazing.  I no longer feel anxiety about whether I missed out on an interesting share on Facebook, or possibly missed some "Breaking News," which lets be honest, the threshold for news that is breaking has really gotten low nowadays...

I now feel more connected by being less connected, I now feel like I can really relax and most importantly, I now feel like I am present in the lives of my kids.  If you need me I am now reachable when I want to be reached - unless, of course, you know my new home number.

"Get off your phone" sign at a pre-school in Texas