2. My kids took piano lessons. Minimum sentence: 2 years. Turns out, once they took the lessons for a while, they began to actually play music, and actually liked it. Older one took lessons for 6 years, younger one for 5 years.
3. If they were full before finishing what was on their plate, I never forced them. But they were obligated to eat at least a little bit of whatever was served. Today, they are ravenous omnivores who eat anything and everything that isn't nailed down. But both have a grace given to them that when they've eaten enough, they push away. They are not gluttons.
4. They are 18 and 15 years old and I'm still very attentive. I don't have to break up many arguments because they learned a long time ago that they are each others’ natural best friends, and apart from their parents, their best allies, each one having the “back” of the other.
5. We homeschooled. Turned out great. Nothing I have ever done at work has been as worthwhile or as important as working with my wife to educate my sons. Enough said.
6. TV - 30 minutes a day until they were pre-teens. Didn't have to enforce the rule after that, as by then, TV bored them, they'd rather work on the computer, play outside, play the piano, or read a book. No video games either. We never restricted them from playing with this stuff when at friends or neighbors, but we never owned any ourselves. They seemed to have survived.
7. Not exactly sure of the issue. I suppose we have logos on the table. I mean, would you really take ketchup out of the bottle and put it in a small serving dish?? Yikes, I'm not THAT nuts.
8. We were never much of partiers before our kids were born; didn't take it up afterwards. We still did the things we liked before they were born once they were born - fine dining, museums, window shopping, visiting historical sites, etc. They enjoy eating good meals at good restaurants, have proper table manners, enjoy museums, tolerate trips to the mall, and they know in which half-century the Civil War was fought.
9. Never smoked pot in the first place. Saw no reason to take it up upon their entry on the scene.
10. No Disney stuff in our house. But plenty of heroes and the like. Some of my fondest memories were reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my four year-old and then seeing him teach himself how to read because I was going too slowly through The Chronicles of Narnia. Later, his heroes were Odysseus, Xenophon and the like. In the original Greek.
My younger guy just never got much into fiction when he was little. Much rather read the Feynman Lectures. He has taken an interest, however, in writing fiction.
You sound like a fantastic father. Happy Father’s Day!
Excellent and describes my experience as well. The author’s a dufus and part of what’s wrong with American fathers. He’d be better off watching Shane and a half dozen Rifleman episodes if he wants to be a real dad.
Although, I did have a baby backpack so that I could carry my kids with two free hands into the woods, pull up rocks, climb things, cross rivers and have a great time with them right from the get go.