TAKING PART IN FAMILY LIFE

Family life takes time. Ask the Baldwins with their seven kids.

Keep that in mind, you youngsters, when you decide it’s time to join in.

Join the club, the family club, sooner than later.

Why?

Just wondering if the time is right to start a family means you could already be late.

But not too late.

Some guys wait it out until the last possible moment, get married, have kids, then die and get out of the way.

Or, like beloved actor Al Pacino you are a new father at 83.

Or, like Robert DeNiro’s with his latest kid arriving in his 79th year.

Alec Baldwin got married at fifty-four and has seven kids with his wife, with one from his first wife.

Which of the men will see their last kid graduate from high school? From middle school?

Will they make it to the parent-teacher meetings along the way?

 

Here’s Mr. Pacino Having A Good Time At The Park

Being a new dad in your 80’s looks fun?

Go, Al, go.

 

Mr. DeNiro In For A Cuddle

Looks thoughtful and concerned to me. But . . . ?

The two old guys need to meet with their photo staff and review the pose.

They looked staged to me, too.

Baldwin gets it right, or right enough to go along with my kid-goals as a grandparent, which the parenting lifestyle to aim for:

Be a piece of furniture, a workout device, and let the kids who are up to it climb and swing on Granddad.

No knee drops, People’s Elbow, or Stonecold Stunners, just getting the kids wound up enough to discover their strength and power.

 

Will any of these dads get down on the ground and roll around with their kids? With their grandkids?

Let’s hope so.

I have a theory about this:

Kids who are not exposed to superior strength and power, and learning how to use it properly, grow up not respecting strength and power, and blame any and everything when they fail.

The new kid on the playground takes cuts in line to go down the slide, but gets pushed back to the end of the line, won’t like it.

The new kid in the cafeteria who has had it their way their whole life won’t respond well to the lunchroom bully who takes half their sandwich in taxes.

 

Special Treatment For Special Kids

I don’t know about you, but why would celebrity kids go to public school and rub up against the great unwashed?

What are the chances they go to the kind of schools reserved for celebrity kids, giving the DeNiro’s and the Pacino’s a chance to socialize within their own orbit?

Is there a normal parent who would let their kids do an overnighter in their households?

How does Joe who works for a moving company deal with the limo at his door picking up Little Joe?

Things are different between the great divide of money, and family life is fragile.

Does anyone think differently of family man Dave Grohl, the everyday rockstar who drives his kids to school in a minivan like a normal parent?

After he revealed he was an everyday rockstar with a new baby with someone not his wife, does he seem different?

Or Arnold Schwarzenegger after he and his maid announced their son who was born a month after his son with his wife?

People live their lives on their own terms, but a kid only wants family life with mom and dad.

 

The Need To Nurture

Famous people keep having kids at advanced ages to show they can still care for more than themselves?

Or maybe things got carried away, misunderstood, a dream moment uninterrupted?

Maybe that’s what Bobby and Al say, but Baldwin is another story, an ongoing story.

And Arnold? His kids are all older. Like mine.

Maybe it’s time for them to consider others ways to nurture?

 

Back in the 70’s my baby boomer occupied home was a hotbed of birth control talk.

No teen pregnancy was the point of all the talk for the boys.

The general direction of thought was, “Get a girl pregnant and your life is over. Whatever you thought you might do is done. You’re not doing it. Forget college, making money, living life as you know it. You’ll get a job and change diapers and become bitter by the time you’re thirty.”

No one wanted that, but if everyone was cautious and careful, something might happen.

Did something happen?

I was the guy protecting my girl from herself when I said, “No.”

What happens when you shut down a hottie? They find someone else, that’s what happens.

They breakup with you and their new boyfriend wants to fight you in your yard in front of your mom.

If that seems too detailed and specific it’s because they don’t really want to fight.

There I was a varsity letterman getting challenged by a guy looking to impress his new girl on Monday, who’d been my girl on Friday.

She didn’t say anything and I didn’t start throwing hands. It was a learning lesson.

I wasn’t going to be the guy sent to the office for beating up on a little guy younger than me.

 

A Learning Lesson

What I’ve learned?

If at all possible, stick by the mother of your kids.

Stick by your kids from the start.

Stick by the grandkids.

Be sticky. Be a sticker.

How do you explain things to kids, to adults, then to grandkids?

Is that your job? And you’ve a good handle on the work ahead?

Whether yes, or no, you’ve still got to do your best every time you open your mouth.

Kids need you to help them from hurting themselves without being an over-bearing helicopter parent.

Adults need to trust you on what you say and do.

Grandkids need a safe piece of furniture to workout on, and with.

Get on the floor and roll around. Catch and release, but not too tight.

 

PS:

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PSS:

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Until then? Keep learning.