Be present in moments with the kids.
My failure to establish an efficient morning routine with the kids was frustrating, but it seemed rather insignificant once I realized the reason behind it: I was failing as a father. I was by no means an abject failure—Emily and Parker were healthy, they never lacked for any material thing, they loved me, and they loved spending time with me—but I certainly wasn’t the father I wanted to be.
I didn’t realize the extent of my shortcomings until after I assumed the responsibility of getting the kids ready in the mornings, and I could see, moment by moment, what a challenge it presented for me. I don’t presume that managing two spirited toddlers at breakfast is easy for anyone, but for me, it went much deeper: I wasn’t connecting with them at all. Some days, breakfast was the only time I got to see Emily and Parker, and—according to my brain—they weren’t my kids for that hour, they were my chores.
In servicing Emily’s and Parker’s morning needs, I found it easiest to detach from them. I discouraged talking, and playing was out of the question. As I saw it, the task at hand was to feed them and get them out the door as quickly and painlessly as possible. By limiting my participation, morning moments became all about extinguishing fires: make the breakfast, change the diaper, interrupt the food fight. While the approach got me through an average morning without mishap, none of us were enjoying it very much. The most I could hope to extract from our mornings together, depressingly enough, was a sense of accomplishment in completing the daily exercise. That’s not being a dad. That’s being a babysitter. A bad one, at that.
At 8:29, my patience fried, I’d bark at them: “Come here so I can put on your shoes. Emily, put that doll down. No, you can’t color a picture right now, we have to hurry. Emily, put the doll down and put on your shoes. Parker, put your pants back on. Emily, go stand by the door. Parker, sit down so I can put your shoes on. You guys aren’t listening, and I swear to God I’m going to start throwing toys away if that’s what it will take.”
At 8:31, I’d kiss them both good-bye in Mary’s entryway, telling them that I loved them. (I hadn’t exactly shown the love all morning but hoped that a few words would let them know.) Parker would usually kiss me and run off to find a toy after telling me, “My muvvoo koo, Gaggy,” which meant, “I love you, too, Daddy.” Despite all of the barking and scolding and freaking out I’d subjected them to over the past hour in desperate attempts to keep them 100 percent under control, Emily would want me to pick her up and hold her. “Just a few more minutes, Daddy,” she’d whisper. I’d pick her up, squeezing her close. She’d wrap her arms and legs around me as far as she could stretch them, and suddenly, almost cruelly, I would become present. With her hair tickling my cheek, her body light in my arms, and her feet clinging to my sides, I would realize that I had wasted a perfectly good hour of bonding. Then in a whisper she’d tell me, “I don’t want you to go.”
I wish I could be a better dad for you. “I don’t want to go either, sweetie,” I’d say over a lump in my throat. “But Daddy has to go to work now.”
We’d stand in the entryway, swaying back and forth, each of us wishing that things could be different.
After a couple of minutes, Mary would usually dream up some miraculous distraction—something she knew Emily loved to do, like painting a picture or helping her make fresh bread. Emily would slide down my stomach and legs to the floor. Taking Mary’s hand, she’d walk slowly, hesitantly, away.
On the short walk back to our house, my emotions would spin out of control while my mind processed a single thought: I am not good enough for my children. Overwhelming guilt would become crushing sadness somewhere in Mary’s driveway. I am not good enough for my children. Sadness would turn into self-hatred somewhere in our driveway, which would soften to regret moments later. I am not good enough for my children. I would carry that regret around until I got home at the end of the day; that’s when the kids would bombard me, tripping over themselves to give me hugs and ask me to play with them—a moment perfect for erasing guilt, perfect for redemption—only to hear me say that I just needed a few minutes alone to settle in first. “We’ll play later, okay?”
Kristen and I had been married almost two years when she became pregnant with Emily. What should have been the most joyful and exciting time of our life became, for me, something new to worry about. Hooray, we’re having a baby! Wait, wait. What about our house? We can’t raise our baby in a town house—the walls are too thin. We’re going to need to build a new house for our baby. Our baby! Oh, shit, I don’t know how to be a dad! Dads are supposed to keep their cars clean! Dads are supposed to read the newspaper and know what’s going on in the world! Dads are supposed to know how to interact with children!
Yet my car was a mess, like a teenager’s. I had never once read a newspaper, although it wasn’t for lack of trying—in my handful of attempts, I’d gotten distracted by the texture of the paper. The last thought—Dads are supposed to know how to interact with children!—troubled me the most. At that point in our lives, my experiences with young children hadn’t been the greatest. Once when I was a teenager I fell asleep—stone-cold asleep—while babysitting an eighteen-month-old for some friends of my parents. I woke up when they returned home; the air in the family room was thick with the singular scent of fully loaded diaper. Contrary to my parents’ assessment, being exceptionally good at math does not a babysitter make. Lesson learned. I also had a few younger cousins—very sweet kids—who would have been fun to play with had I any idea what to do with them. Technically I was the closest to them in age, which qualified me as someone who should have known how to play with them. I didn’t. Maybe they’d like to roughhouse, I’d think, lowering myself to the floor and encouraging them to stomp on my face until supper was ready.
My record as an adult wasn’t so good, either. I had been told that my first niece, who had just begun to walk, “love-love-loved” being surprised. “Stand behind the wall by the stairs,” my brother told me. “When she comes around the corner, jump out and surprise her. It’s the cutest thing.” It seemed everyone else had a comparatively tame interpretation of the phrase “jump out and surprise her.” Thirty seconds later, Kristen, my brother, and my sister-in-law watched in horror as my niece rounded the corner and I pounced, screaming at the top of my lungs and fluttering my hands in her face. She didn’t seem to love-love-love it.
Despite the fact that I couldn’t handle spending time around anyone else’s youngsters, I always wanted kids of my own. I didn’t understand what that really meant, of course. I doubt if anyone does. Like almost anything real life has to offer, I assumed parenthood amounted to the stuff I saw happening in sitcoms and movies—two young parents swoon over their cooing infant; years later they’re skipping through a zoo holding hands as a family; invaluable life lessons are imparted moments before the limo arrives on prom night; flash forward to the eldest child returning home from college abroad, a little surprise visit to the graying parents who still have time and energy for a quick game of horse in the driveway, just like old times.
Before we became parents, I had myself pegged as a regular Cosby Show–certified family man—wise, good-humored, nothing if not perfectly qualified to raise children. Discipline would come naturally, and I’d know how to tie knots. Family moments would be something to treasure, rich, no doubt, with a spirit of joy and affection. Nothing would be more fulfilling than . . . oh hell, I didn’t know . . . doing whatever it was people did with kids.
Three years into fatherhood, my time with Emily and Parker had begun to feel empty. I loved them, but I wasn’t loving time spent with them. I understood that I was supposed to react to key defining moments in their development—lying with Parker for the first time in his new bigkid bed, Emily’s first preschool recital. I understood the significance of those moments, and I recorded them in my memory. But I didn’t feel as much as I thought I should.
I hadn’t always felt so disconnected. I knew how to spend time with Emily and Parker when they were babies; with babies, it’s impossible not to feel precisely whatever the moment creates. I felt satisfied holding them or plopping down with them on a blanket in the soft grass, their sweetly scented heads protected from the sun by oversized bonnets. I loved tickling their irresistible, round tummies and watching them figure out how to lift their heads up, how to roll themselves over, how to crawl, and finally, how to stand up and walk.
But standing on their own, Emily and Parker became individuals. They started forming opinions. They learned how to engage with us, how to ask for things they couldn’t have and how to refuse things they needed. They started inventing their own games with confusing, insane rules (“Daddy, you hold this crown. Parker, you go inside the refrigerator and hand me food. When I say ‘stop,’ we all clap, and the first one who hops the longest wins the biggest fork ever”). They even started creating their own versions of familiar games, oblivious to the traditional rules. We would play hide-and-seek, for instance, and as soon as I’d count to ten and begin my search, Emily would leap out from behind a wall and tag me, declaring me “it,” while Parker would call from the other room, “I’m in the playhouse!” When I’d try explaining the rules for the umpteenth time, they would become antsy and suggest a new game to play, at which point I’d get annoyed and find some reason to excuse myself. “I’d better go fold that laundry now. You kids play.”
Kristen sometimes watched from the sidelines, confounded by my inability to participate. She told me that I seemed checked-out, that I was missing too much. During our performance review, she told me that as the kids got older, the opportunities to spend time with them would change and diminish. “We’ll never have this period of their lives back, Dave. For your own sake, I wish you could engage with them and get something out of it.”
While I knew what parenthood was supposed to look like, I didn’t know what I was supposed to extract from the time spent with our kids. Should I be seeking a sense of pride in educating them, or a sense of decency in raising them to value discipline and courtesy, or what? I discussed this one day with Kristen, and she responded, “They’re only this age once. Yes, we need to teach them things, and yes, we need to keep them disciplined. But if you’re wondering what it is you should be extracting from your moments with them, it’s joy. Period.”
I began looking for the joy and was disappointed—a little troubled, actually—when I couldn’t find it. What I did find was that Kristen’s assessment had been perfectly accurate: I may have occupied the same space as Emily and Parker, but I wasn’t present. My mind was often somewhere else when I was with them, so I started following where it went. Sometimes, I was preoccupied with whatever we were playing, wondering how I could make it better or more efficient. I wasn’t thinking about making the experience better, just analyzing the circumstances: This tower of blocks would be more sturdy if we used a wider base and cantilevered those upper terraces. We’ll have to reconstruct it, and maybe when we do, I can use the colors to teach them about groups and patterns. I should videotape this. But first I need to get a blanket to sit on, this floor is so hard.
Most often I was thinking about other things I could have been doing, such as mowing the lawn or relaxing in front of the television. Kristen would sometimes have to remind me that I was supposed to be playing.
“Parker has been asking you over and over to help him rebuild his tower. Don’t you hear him?”
I would admit that, no, I hadn’t heard him, that I had drifted away to my own little world, and then I’d log it in my journal: When building towers, figuring out the best and worst things to say to pregnant women can wait. Pay attention!
Understanding where my focus went was helpful, but I didn’t know what to do next, so I asked Kristen to help me flesh out a strategy for more meaningful involvement. She didn’t feel that was necessary. “There’s no trick to enjoying your time with the kids, Dave. It’s not a process. Just be present. I don’t know how else to say it.”
I wrote her advice down on a Post-it note—Be present in moments with the kids—and stuck it to our kitchen counter. I had written those words maybe a dozen times since our performance review and still they hadn’t sunk in. All I could think was, How? I couldn’t ask Kristen to explain it. How would a neurotypical go about explaining something as elemental as engaging with the outside world? It would be like me telling her, “Go solve some differential equations.” Her brain just doesn’t work that way.
I spent weeks trying to force myself to be present with nothing to show for it. Then one day in the spring, I was outside on our patio watching Emily and Parker hunt for worms in our flower beds in their old Halloween costumes. Emily was a cow and Parker a lobster—surf ’n’ turf. They would find a fat night crawler and take turns holding it and squealing with delight before running to the swing set to give the worm a ride. After about a minute, on Emily’s command, Parker would turn the worm loose and they’d run back to the flower beds to find another one.
It was a beautiful, quiet day. The daffodils that lined the curved seating wall of our patio were in bloom, and the flowering dogwoods we had planted the previous year were starting to fill out, their leaves lending a soft voice to the breeze. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and it finally hit me: If you want to be present, just be present. You can’t force it. You can’t overthink it. Insisting on being present, in and of itself, detaches a person from a moment. By making a conscious effort to engage and connect, you end up thinking rather than feeling, and you miss the moment completely. Nothing numbs feelings like thoughts.
Unfortunately, I tend to be more analytical. My exceptional need for control and order often defeats my ability to be present and to feel. Feelings, like children, are disconnected from order and reason. Although feelings (like children) may have their own sort of logic, they tend to go wherever they want. But unlike children, there’s no control over feelings; there’s only chaos. Chaos begets uncertainty, and there is nothing scarier to someone with Asperger’s than uncertainty. Logic, on the other hand, brings the world under control, and routine—sweet, sweet routine—keeps it there. That’s why I rely so heavily on logical thinking and rigid routines. Lining up the items on my desktop; working Monday through Friday without exception; executing my morning regimen without interruption. These rituals create order; they pacify my mind. No surprises, no behavioral triggers, no meltdowns.
Because I tend to overthink everything, it’s rather easy for me to isolate myself from a moment. That’s me in the orchestra hall, unfolding my copy of the score and following along, measure by measure, while the music swells and the people around me dab their tears dry. That’s me during the Fourth of July fireworks trying to identify trajectory patterns in the expanding bubbles of sparks while the other spectators gasp about whatever it is they find so moving. It may have been what Kristen was trying to tell me all along, but experiencing joy—with children or with anything—requires one to feel. In order to feel, one must suspend analysis and critical thinking. Routine might also go out the window and—as I wrote in my Journal of Best Practices—you have to learn to allow that to happen. You have to learn to hand yourself over to the moment.
When I was a kid, being present was much easier. I don’t remember resorting to logic and analysis as a child. Maybe that’s because everything was already under control—my parents took care of that, so I was free to experience things as I pleased. I really didn’t have anything to think about, and yet there was a lot I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why I loved the smell of my dad’s work shirts. It didn’t occur to me to consider why I could fall asleep on my mom’s feet while she folded laundry. I didn’t have any theories to help explain why I could stand for what seemed like an eternity in one spot in my dad’s pasture, staring at the tall grass as it swayed back and forth in the sunlight or moved like waves across the hillside when the breeze picked up. In my childhood world, the grass was shiny, the sun was warm, and everything around me could be transformed into a medieval kingdom on a moment’s notice.
Now I have my own kids, I thought, watching Parker try to tickle a long night crawler he’d plucked from the flower bed. This is their childhood. It’s happening right now, whether I’m present or not. They just want me to be in it. I had finally reached a turning point.
I made a conscious decision to start surrendering myself to Emily and Parker’s childhood at every available opportunity. In doing so, I found that there was some procedure to it after all—something I’m certain that even Kristen did, but she wasn’t aware of it because it came naturally to her. The procedure involved two steps. First, I had to constantly remind myself to participate in their childhood whenever I was with them—whether we were at home, buying vegetables at the farmer’s market, or running errands in the car. Second, I had to ask myself every time we did things together, What is this moment really about? Is it about building the perfect tower of blocks? Is it about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without leaving a mess all over the counter? No, it’s about enjoying the experience with them, so do that.
I must say, it worked out beautifully.
“Okay,” I said, trying on a pair of swimming goggles. “I think I’m ready.”
It was a sunny Saturday morning in June. For three months I had been working on giving Kristen more time to herself in the mornings. I’d realized that the secret to doing so successfully was to learn how to engage with the kids, and by Mother’s Day, I’d learned what engaging with them really meant. Now Father’s Day was around the corner and I was standing in our upstairs hallway in my swimming trunks, watching Kristen gather towels and dry clothes for me and the kids.
“Looks like you’re all set,” she said, giving my waistband a little tug. “I’ll send up the kids if you want to start running the water.”
“You got it.” I gave her a thumbs-up and headed into the bathroom.
I had offered to administer baths to the kids after breakfast (“You kids are in luck, because Daddy is giving you baths today!”), but Kristen was reluctant to let me.
“It always ends with you getting pissed off, or someone crying or going to time-out, and I just don’t feel like dealing with that today,” she said. “I’ll just do it.”
Her comment was still ringing in my head when I turned on the tub faucet and watched the water cascade into a shallow pool around the open drain. I couldn’t remember the last time I had given the kids a bath, but I knew exactly what Kristen was talking about. I have a sensory issue with water. I don’t mind being immersed in it or showering in it, but when water splashes me unexpectedly, I go insane. There’s the surprise of the sensation—unsolicited wetness—and the uncertainty of the next hit: when it will land, where it will land. I’ve always had an issue with this. When I was young, we went to the beach a few times each summer and I loved it—especially swimming. But then other kids would start splashing and I’d scramble out of the water to sit by my mom under a towel until it was time to go home.
I stuck my hand under the faucet. The water was warm—just right—so I pushed the stopper down and began filling the tub. The rush of the water was so loud that I could no longer hear what was going on outside of the bathroom. My entire world had been reduced to that bath for the time being—just like when I was a kid.
If you’re doing it right, giving babies and toddlers a bath is nothing but splashing. You might have a few minutes right at the beginning when they’re simply mesmerized by the rushing and rising of the water. But then you have to dump water from a cup all over them and scrub them with soap, an activity that is sure to get you wet. Wet clothes are also a problem—I can’t stand being in them. The sensation of damp cloth clinging to my skin sets my nerves on fire and I can’t function. I become temperamental and impatient. Because of this, bath time with the kids had always been a tremendous challenge. (Despite the fact that every parenting book on the planet says that bath time is one of the best times for a dad to bond with his children.) A ten-minute bath would result in a half hour of tears from our inconsolable children after I’d removed them from the tub for behaviors that I’d deemed unacceptable, such as splashing or standing up. Our crying children would be Kristen’s to deal with. This was what she had meant whenever she told me that when I was around I made things harder on everyone.
“Can’t you just fucking relax and enjoy things with us?” she’d ask as I’d storm away to our bedroom to towel off and put on dry clothes. “Next time, do me a favor and don’t help.”
But that all changed with my backyard epiphany. I hadn’t stopped hating the splashing, but I’d found a solution: the bathing suit and goggles. But those were just the price of admission to the real party, which started the moment the kids came rushing into the bathroom, completely naked, tackling me and showering me with laughter and hugs.
The bath was going rather well. My slippery kids were laughing at each other and sharing toys, and I wasn’t exhausted by a sense of rage or regret. Instead, I felt fulfilled.
While Emily fashioned a hat out of bubbles, Parker examined his belly button; I couldn’t help but laugh. They had finally pulled me into their world—the kingdom of childhood—and it felt profoundly familiar. The world in which I tend to isolate myself, my painful, lonely, hyper-controlled world, isn’t without its charms. But as comforting as my routines are, I’ve never had one look at me with soap bubbles on its nose and tell me that it loves me.
Kristen came into the bathroom and kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to take a shower while the kids finish their bath,” she said.
“That sounds nice,” I said. “Take your time.”
Just like that.