Trophies for Everybody? Or Nobody?

If you pay attention to the Intrawebs these days and have kids, no doubt you are aware of the tedious "Everyone Gets a Trophy" debate.

If you've somehow missed this debate, consider yourself lucky. Basically, the question revolves around whether awarding participation trophies to all members of a league or organization teaches kids that losing is ok (or worse, that nobody ever loses in a world of rainbows and unicorns, leading to a sense of entitlement later in life) or whether it establishes self-esteem in kids that they at least completed a task, even if they weren't the best.

Unfortunately, like any social discourse these days, there is either a Wrong/Right, Black/White, My Way/Highway resolution that involves no room for nuance or discussion. (Otherwise, who would continue to click on the links?) And since very few issues outside of slavery have boiled down to Wrong/Right, we never fully reach a fully vetted conclusion and just let the wind take us to where the people speak the loudest.

And the wind in this case has led us to say NO to participation trophies. Fine by me, but (and close your ears if you hate participation trophies) my kid got a participation trophy. And I LIKED it.

He was four years old when he entered his second season if T-Ball this spring. The goal of the league was to teach 4- and 5-year-olds how to throw, catch, hit, run bases, and most importantly, pay attention when somebody is talking to them. In other words, what we as parents can never seem to do.

Everybody batted each inning. Each hitter got one base whether the ball went to the outfield or trickled out to the pitcher's mound. The last hitter each inning hit a grand slam, driving in the remaining baserunners. Nobody kept score, and each game lasted one hour.

For the folks bemoaning those rules, consider that over the course of a 12-game season, we saw a total of two "outs" recorded. One of those came when the batter hit the ball and ran a third of the way to first base, then immediately veered and ran to second base, so technically he was out of the baseline.

The second out came when the batter hit the ball and walked toward first base but then stopped to write his name in the dirt. This allowed the players on our team to flock to the ball like seagulls to a discarded bread bowl, fight over the ball, drop the ball, pick the ball up, drop it again, pick it up, throw it over the first baseman's head, watch the first baseman retrieve it, then tag the base for the out.

If we were playing "real" rules, by the end of the season, we still would have been in the top of the first inning of the first game. And we're worried that these kids get trophies? Every single person involved, parents included, deserved an award for sitting through that. (Baseball purists would argue that nobody gets a trophy.)

Running hard...the ball is somewhere over the first baseman's head.

If the goal is to light competitive fires under the losers, an end-of-year ceremony to dole out trophies only to the deserving would require two things: (1) That kids get the dandelions out of their ears and actually pay attention, and (2) An understanding that 5-year-olds are going to sweep the awards in a 4-5-year-old league unless a 4-year-old is the next Barry Bonds. "Congratulations, Owen, for being the oldest and biggest kid on the team. The rest of ya, eat your veggies, your Wheaties, your beans and weenies and try again next year." Most kids I know just aren't that competitive.

Or are they? My son developed his own competitive fire, asking me after the last several games if his team won. I told him that it was a tie, and he acted as if I had asked him to go give his sister a big smooch on the lips. (What, you wanted me to artificially inflate his ego by saying he "won" when his team couldn't even record an out?)

So there has to be an age when we start awarding trophies only to winners...but if each participant develops a sense of competition at a different age, where do we start?

We start at age 9. Sounds arbitrary enough, but most 9-year-olds are in third grade, and third grade is when we start to see the physical advantages of age and development begin to disappear...we'll never have the perfect age because each child is different. Plus it was at that age that I flung my baseball glove across the outfield during another losing baseball game, one where we allowed 14 runs in the last inning to lose a very winnable game, 17-6.

Therefore, my alternative to the polarizing yes/no question of participation trophies for all kids...yes until age nine, after that you're going to have to show us something to bring home the hardware, if trophies are your thing. I'll be honest, I can't find a single one of mine, big or small. My dad gave me one he brought home after winning a 10K 35 years ago, not sure where that one is either.

Wait, do we even need trophies at all?

10 Weeks 'til Halloween

From Left: Michael Angela, Raphael. Not Pictured: Elsa

Not long ago, I checked in with my two-year-old son and told him I loved him. He quickly told me "No" and changed the subject to one of the more pressing issues of the day, the status of his stuffed ninja turtle, "Michael Angela."

"He seepin'."

You probably thought when you saw the words "pressing issues of the day" that we would discuss public breastfeeding, play dates, or sex in the delivery room. But no. Those were soooo last week. This week the focus in this household is solely on Halloween...and why not? It's only 10 weeks away, the kids already have their costumes (Michael Angela, Raphael, and Elsa, for the record.) And even though the radio stations aren't playing their favorite Halloween music yet, thankfully the card stores have their stuff out. So we're in good stead.

Halloween is a big deal in our house for reasons that aren't supported by biology. My wife has officially named it her "least favorite" holiday, and I was never one to dress up for fun myself, especially in 4th grade when I went to school as a pirate and had to wear my great-aunt's winter boots. Still, our kids rigorously scan the catalogs and select their timely, topical costumes three months in advance without regard for whether they'll remain timely and topical on the day they show up on other people's doorsteps for candy. But really, how could they not be timely? Everyone knows who the Ninja Turtles and Elsa are, and everyone will still know them on October 31, unless they suffer a horrific head injury between now and then.

For years I have tried to hold the Halloween costume as a behavior control mechanism, much the way the famed child psychiatrist Santa Claus uses a lump of coal or dog poop. "If you're on the naughty list this Halloween, you have to go as grapes" I instruct my mortified kids, threatening to take away their princess and superhero turtle costumes and letting them know that their behavior won't be tolerated, lest the whole family dress up go out as the Fruit of the Loom gang.

You think I'm kidding...the youngest would go as a banana, the other two kids go as grapes, one purple and one green. My wife will be the leaves and I'm the big red apple. This is happening some day. And for their sake, they'd be better off if it happens some year sooner rather than later.

Usually our Halloweens involve both parents scurrying home from work just in time to jam some frozen fish sticks and french fries down before heading out with each child for some candy. Unfortunately, our neighborhood also participates in the Halloween ritual...by dressing itself as Hell. No street lights, a darkening, foreboding sky, numerous houses with no lights on (don't worry, we weren't going to visit you anyway, don't flatter yourself), it looks like a setting more equipped for an ax murder than a benign holiday tradition.

This actually works to our advantage. Because neither I or my wife really enjoys Halloween, we can go to the 8 houses (of 75 in the development) that actually participate and rake in about 35 houses' worth of chocolate. Because we are apparently the only practicing Halloweeners in our demographic, we often are the only customers these eight houses see, and they just stuff entire candy bars and chip bags into our sacks. It makes for a short, efficient evening of groveling.

Sure, there are missteps. Last year, as my then year-old Mickey Mouse reached for a bag of Sour Cream and Onion potato chips and I reflexively blurted out "Yucccckkkk" to him like I did when he tried to eat lint out of the vacuum sweeper. I meant it as "you're never going to eat those, grab something you will eat" but it sounded totally ungrateful. Sometimes my mouth is better off duct-taped shut in all social situations.

But, um, yeah, we're all looking forward to Halloween already (half eye-roll). We've tried on our costumes, we've recited every line from the various pieces in which our characters have appeared ("it's heroes, not turtles in a half-shell) and, where applicable, we've practiced ninja moves on each other, mostly without incident. We'll store these costumes in a safe, dry place and pray to the Gods of All Hallows Eve that nobody grows much this fall, because if they do, then they may have to go as grapes.

Kids Against Humanity

Take a little breather today and play fill-in-the-blanks with Kids Against Humanity, the less raunchy, less offensive, younger sibling of Cards Against Humanity. Following are four sentences with some blanks. The Word List is found below. Use your experiences with children -- yours or someone else's -- to fill in the blanks with the best answers, then share them in the comments. Best answer wins...nothing, except our adulation. Then come up with some better questions and answers and we'll laugh together all the way to Poughkeespie.

1. Fine, go ahead and _________. But don't come crying to me when you ___________.

2. I can't believe you waited until ___________ to decide you were going to ____________ .

3. Who said it was ok to _____________ in the _______________?

you were naked	after supper	puke your brains out in the back seat
play Ninja turtles	eat only ketchup	underpants
try to burp the alphabet	put your toys away	fall down the stairs
church	laundry hamper	the fish tank
Bar Mitzvah	high school graduation	the back corner of the garage
cry all night	put your clothes away	suddenly lose your shit
3:15 AM	the bathtub	Prom Night
wake up your brother by banging pans together	belly button	fall asleep in the tanning booth
chase your sister with a fork	have a blowout	drink a half gallon of chocolate milk
your 16th birthday	wear your Tim Tebow jersey	swimming pool
the toilet	wear deodorant	the diaper genie
the baby's diaper	expensive vase	go swimming right after eating
pee	parents	get drunk on Zima
middle of November	bedtime	never eat again
sleep in your parents' bed	have an epic meltdown	poop your pants
shower	get arrested	leave the front door wide open
the end of 'Frozen'	break curfew	cheat at Candy Land
go to every bathroom in North America	get beat up	wear sunscreen
starve to death	after dark	Grandma came over
trip me while I carry a cup of hot chocolate	dog	end up in the emergency room
eat popcorn	lose all your money	gigantic fire
couch cushions	McDonald's	throw your sister's doll babies in the fire
eat glue	the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl	pick your nose
pack-and-play	cat's butt	shove M&M's up your nose
adolescence	Yankee Candle store	text your mother

Once again, those questions are:

1. Fine, go ahead and _________. But don't come crying to me when you ___________.

2. I can't believe you waited until ___________ to decide you were going to ____________ .

3. Who said it was ok to _____________ in the _______________?

Bowl at Your Own Risk

The problem is: "Find a way to get this ball down this alley while knocking over the maximum number of pins."

Last week we promised the birthday boy a bowling outing but we ran out of time between the jumpy houses, the pizza and the cake-- in that order, to avoid having to cordon off the jumpy houses for a thorough disinfection. We ate a LOT of pizza and cake that weekend. Experts caution against bowling 30 minutes after eating, and we had no particular 30-minute stretch where we weren't eating, so...

Or is that swimming they meant? Regardless, I feel like the slang word hella should be used to describe all that cake, as in "after we ate all that cake, we moved around like we were stuck in hella quicksand," but I'm not sure that's proper usage. The word hella sounds contrived anyway. So we may leave that one in the bag permanently. Says the hopelessly old man. 

This weekend the calendar was a bit more open from a food standpoint, so we called up the lanes to inquire about availability, and they had open bowling from now until about Labor Day.

The look on my face when I heard the cost of two games of bowling probably gave the guy behind the counter the impression I had swallowed one of the house balls. Wasn't there a time when you could bowl all day, all night, and sleep there if you needed to, for $5 + pizza? Or did I dream that, and woke up really angry?

We got to our lane where everyone got a good laugh over the absurd bowling shoes (ha ha), picked out our balls, then set down for those most tedious bowling tasks...deciding who was going in which order, what name they would use, and typing those names into the machine. I was not expecting to be greeted with a two-page disclaimer at the sign-in screen:

BOWL AT YOUR OWN RISK

Like poring through the 54 pages of legalese while registering for a Web site offering free pocket lint always seems a bit much, the 2 pages of warnings that accompany bowling were too much for me. But it sounded like we were about to ride a roller coaster through an Afghani piranha tank. Nobody with recent heart problems or medical issues should bowl, nor should pregnant women or sufferers of recent 4-hour erections. They almost needed a 4-foot mini-statue of Earl Anthony with a sign reading, "You must be as tall as my follow-through to bowl without an adult." And whatever you do, don't touch the foul line. 

One safety precaution they missed was, "Don't stick your head in the ball return," which I guess we all thought was understood (now all the bowling lanes will have to post it) until the 2-year-old went to retrieve his ball by climbing "in the tunnel." This was after his first ever throw, which was preceded by much pomp and circumstance. The 7-year-old, self-proclaimed "Boss of the Kids" commandeered a ramp and immediately centered it in the lane while the 5-year-old carried his brother's ball for him and set it on top for him to push. It looked like a bit of an Odyssey of the Mind project, but it was truly a watershed moment in sibling cooperation, one that they would immediately forget. 

Many, many people throughout kids' sports bemoan the concept of "Everyone Gets a Trophy," but easily the most efficient way to artificially inflate your children's confidence is to take them bumper bowling. In particular, our daughter, who I want to say "perfected" the science with a herky-jerky motion that left the ball traveling at a 45-degree angle. Luckily, the force with which her ball hit the bumper often caused a decent enough kickback that the ball ended up down the middle, and she proudly put up a career-best score of 107 when under normal conditions she would have struggled to bowl a minus 6. 

The lanes were not as forgiving to the five-year-old, who pushed a slower ball that meandered over to and then ultimately hugged the bumper, causing many of his tosses to end up in threes or even "bummers." (More on "bummers" later.) As the frustration of minimal pin action--and losing to his sister-- intensified, he decided he would roll the ball instead of pushing it, and in one unfortunate but not unforeseen event, the ball went straight up in the air and landed just over the foul line, inching its way down the alley before coming to rest somewhere between all those arrows the pros think they use. 

The first reaction of anyone when the ball gets stuck is to go get it, but we have ingrained in our children that (1) you never go into the street unattended, more importantly (2) you never, ever, EVER go get your bowling ball. If you've never crossed that line before, it's like ice skating if you've never ice skated before. So oily are the lanes, so tractionless are those clown shoes, a civilian stands virtually no chance of walking without falling onto a plane of goo. So the guy behind the counter has to go.

Today they turned the foul line buzzer off, much to my chagrin. You can learn a lot about your kids by their reaction to a bowling lane's foul line buzzer. My daughter, the careful rule-follower, treats it like an electric fence. So does my older son, but he's clumsy enough to accidentally cross it all 20 times in a game. The two-year-old would have foregone his entire game just to make it go off constantly. 

Whoever invented those ramps and bumper bowling, however, is a genius. Studies published in the Pediatric Bowling Journal (PBJ) have shown that the attention span of every kid in the world is exactly 14 frames. Before helpful items like bumpers and ramps, it was about 5. Now, bowling alleys can suck that extra game out of your wallet, because the kids always say, "Let's Play Two!" and now you've paid double for nothing more than the right to hear how "thiiiiiiirsty" everyone is. By the middle of the second game, the kids are bored, picking each other's ears, arguing over Gatorade and half-assing their turns or refusing them altogether. By the eighth frame, Dad is averting an outright coup by taking everyone's turn and bowling between his legs or with the opposite hand, which initially gets a few laughs and stretches a groin or two.

One feature that tries desperately to keep the kids' attention are the animated recaps of the previously thrown ball on the scoreboard. Pins are put into all sorts of situations...dressed as pirates, pillaging other pins...dressed as cowboys, lassoing other pins...dressed as basketball players ferociously dunking a bowling ball and smashing other pins...each time with a brief commentary. 9 pins down gets you a "Wow Dude", 7 pins down gets a "Good Try" and 1 pin down gets a "BUMMER." So of course, when the 5-year-old asks what "bummer" means, without hesitation we respond that "it's when you only get one pin down in bowling."

He'll continue to use that term until some day when he's out with his buddies and he tries to use it, and they'll just think they misheard him or he misspoke--until he does it again, and then his boys (or whatever friends will be called in 2030) will give him the business about it. I'll miss that, of course, because I'll be old and at home in my easy chair making some asinine predictions like what day Brian Williams will announce his retirement from the NBC Nightly News. (September 14, 2030.) So I'll have to hear about it the next time I see him. Then I'll remember this day.

But until that day, we learned that bowling can be a dangerous activity if you're not prepared. Other than a few smashed fingers between balls, a few hangnails, the near miss with the ball return, and the usual coming out of there looking like you just changed the fluids on an 18-wheeler, however, we were no worse for wear. Everyone had a good time. You might say it was actually really fun. 

Like this? Like the FB page too!

Gross Motor Skills

The children had their annual well visits to the doctor earlier this week, and we're of course relieved and blessed to report that we won't soon be the subjects of a Dr. Nancy Snyderman segment on the Today Show. Still, this wasn't the typical well visit, as the good doctor gave a some take-home assignment this time.

Today the newly minted 5-year-old  was diagnosed with something called hypermobility, which sounds like something this guy would have suffered from (or maybe enjoyed), but instead is something this guy has. This means that he's double-jointed, I think, but "double-jointed" doesn't sound medical enough. It also means that his fine motor skills are anything but. But in order to strengthen his fine motor skills, he must first strengthen his gross motor skills. (We'll pause here and allow you to come up with your best machine-gun farting in his sleep jokes. All of them are applicable and appreciated. Go ahead, we'll wait.)

No. Gross motor skills instead are things like being able to jump off the couch onto your little brother's head, throwing a baseball at your little brother's head, or passing a routine sobriety test. Also the essential skill of hopping on one foot on your brother's head, something that admittedly I've never seen him do, though not out of pity. The fact that he can't stand, let alone hop, on one foot at the age of five without falling into the bookshelf is terrifying to me, because that means he's just like me. I have no gross motor skillz. I didn't learn to tie my shoes until third grade. Just last year (last year) at a children's museum I fell off a balance thingie and plowed over a mother AND her daughter. This was LAST YEAR.

In order to avoid those embarrassments and many like them befalling my son, we'll be taking him to OT, which is not overtime, but Occupational Therapy, yet another thing that sounds like something it's not. "After a rough day at the office, I just need to go to the bar for some Occupational Therapy." Wrong. This OT involves training that will enhance his muscles so that when it comes down to fine motor skills, his handwriting won't look like the crawler on al-Jazeera TV (unless he wants it to) and he'll be able to load the copy machine at work without producing a ream of accordion fans.

The kid comes by it honestly, though. After 39 years it didn't seem abnormal to me that I can bend my index finger back a little. And my wife, at the ripe old age of...at a ripe age, didn't realize that not everyone can touch their wrist with their thumb. Every time I think about touching my wrist with my thumb, my thumb hurts as I feel it breaking off into my lap. The Rocky Statue is more likely to be able to touch its wrist with its thumb. The last thing I need is to lack opposable thumbs, so I don't even try. In fact, I don't even look at my thumbs any more. I really like having thumbs.

So far the hypermobility hasn't hindered his sports aptitude much. He regularly kicks soccer balls into the other team's net, can ice skate slowly in a straight line and can hit a baseball. (Though I worry about his swing. We've been working on the proper "step and swing" technique, and every time I pitch the ball he does the Pennsylvania Polka with the bat and swats at my patented slow, straight ball like it's a darting horsefly. So I usually just let him rip, bad technique and all.)

Next week this very same kid goes for an eye exam. I'm too afraid to know how that goes.

Of course, we still feel blessed. Plenty of parents are spending way too many hours and days in the hospital, caring for and worrying about kids with serious illnesses. That our worst-case so far is a treatable, minor condition that may make my son a little clumsy but ultimately poses no threat to his well-being? That's a pretty good day at the doctor's office.

If you're reading this, Mimzy, we're thinking about you.