Attention experienced parents of the world: I am seeking your advice.
On a scale of one to 10, one being a coma and 10 being Kelly Ripa after a Starbucks bender, how did you react when your child showed no interest in something you enjoyed immensely in your own childhood and looked forward to vicariously participating in through the next generation?
At this point, my son is not yet 21/2, so the only thing he’s really showing interest in is working the DVD player and pretending he doesn’t need his diaper changed. But I realize now that I actually have a child just how unfortunate it may have been for me to spend all that time fantasizing about father-son activities that mostly involved me growing a junior me who pretty much liked all the same stuff I do.
Case in point: Kristie, Jack and I spent Saturday in Marion watching the Linn-Mar Marching Invitational. My wife is a band director, I’m a career band geek, my sister-in-law student teaches at Cedar Rapids Washington and I really wanted to see Independence perform, so it was a tailor-made afternoon, a real family affair.
We caught up to the Clinton High School caravan — including five buses — at the U.S. 30 off-ramp west of DeWitt and followed the whole line all the way to Marion. Kristie and I talked about what instrument we’d like Jack to play and how involved I’d like to be with the band boosters organization.
I was envisioning spending my Saturday mornings loading sousaphones and bass drums onto a trailer bound for who knows where when a jolt of reality punctured my thought bubble — what if Jack doesn’t want to be in band?
Continue reading "Tuba, trumpet or... nothing at all?"
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