Advice To New Parents

 

This week's big news is Tim Andrews, the man of a thousand voices, has become a father at the age of fifty.

Tim is a radio guy for those of you that don’t know, providing spot-on impressions of just about everybody on WSB's "The Von Haessler Doctrine"  He’s very talented, and I can’t tell how many times he’s caused me to spew my coffee.  When Tim’s on the radio, I become a regular Redd Foxx drinking ripple.

Fifty is long of tooth to become a Dad for this first time. Oh sure, I know of guys who have traded in Wife Number One for a Newer Model only to have the Newer Model pop out a couple of kids.

But in the Old Dad-New Family paradigm, this old Dad has some experience raising a rug rat.  

Having a kid is one of the most rewarding experiences a person can have.  It is also the most exhausting.

My son was born in 1991. I was thirty-one years old. I’m not sure what happened in the years 1991, 1992, or 1993.  It was all one big blur. 

I know The Braves went from Worst to First, and the country hired someone from Arkansas to be the most powerful person on earth. Something called "Garth Brooks" became famous. That''s about it.

My first bit of advice for a new parent is to sleep as much as possible.

My son, for various reasons, didn’t sleep through the night until he turned one.

We had a friend whose baby slept through the night from day one. My advice:  find a baby like this.

The second bit of advice. Do not compare other kids to your kid.  Girls are generally more advanced than boys, and by more advanced I mean, more human. 

They learn to do potty stuff way sooner than boys. A lot of boys are still pooping in their pants at 15.  (Not true, but it sure seems that way.)

Girls learn how to write and speak very early, while boys mainly communicate using underarm fart noises.

Now, it is not all bad with boys.  Boys generally have better toys than girls, and at least you won’t have to watch many DVDs of girls becoming empowered to be President of The Solar System.

One thing Tim will have to deal with is being The Oldest Dad At Little League.

Back when we were doing rec league baseball, we would run into these Dads who could have been my Dad. I remember one Dad in particular who I thought resembled Grandpa Walton before discovering he was the boy’s father. 

My favorite old dad moment was when the kid ask his old dad for a Powerade. If you do anything semi-athletic with boys under the age of ten, they have to have a gallon of sports drinks close by on the off-chance the boys might dehydrate and die.  The Old Dad's response to the request:  "I'll power your ade."

Finally, my final bit of advice to any new parent is to take a breath and try to do your best.

It takes a village to raise a child, and unfortunately, the village is wrong a lot of the time.

One of my brothers had dyslexia.  When he was in the second grade, my mother went to the principal of our elementary school. She said, “I’ve had Donald (she never referred to him as that unless she was mad at him or it was in a formal setting) tested, and he has dyslexia.”  The principal said, “There’s a lot of that going around,” and proceeded to say that there was something wrong with the way she was parenting.

By the way, before he died, he earned a Master’s Degree.

People will always, happily, give you advice on how to raise YOUR child but for some reason do not want to hear anything you might say about the subject.

This is because their child is the greatest, and yours just happens to be there.  My mother always said, “Every crow thinks theirs is the blackest".

That’s why you never comment on how another child is being raised.  If the parents want to raise him as Amish and teach him his life’s work is building a barn, that’s no skin off your nose.  Let those people raise their kid, and you raise your own.

I think my wife and I have done a pretty good job with our son.  He has a job, a wife, and a house. He calls his momma at least twice and week.

And he gave me this really cool “Buckee” t-shirt I’m wearing right now.