JB Hager's Blog

Welcome to the generation of the “over the top” parents. Our generation is doing things for our kids that our parents could not have imagined. I think we are in the midst of a parenting craze that is going to soon be nicknamed, analyzed and made fun of for years to come. I’m going to go ahead and call it “Earl Woods Syndrome”. Who can forget that image of Tiger at age 2 on the Mike Douglas Show putting with Bob Hope? Somehow, that was imbedded in our minds as a role model for good parenting. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We feel like we have to give our children every opportunity to achieve greatness at an age where most are still filling their diapers involuntarily. The big difference between most of the parents and me is that I’m not accomplished at ANYTHING. Because I lack the expertise to teach her any kind of activity, I’m a sucker for the “expert for hire”.

My parents would freak if they knew I was getting my kid individual swim lessons every week for the last three years. It started out as “let’s make sure she can swim just in case she falls in water” and quickly became “Hey, she’s pretty good at this, we ought to stick with it. It’s easy to jump ahead 15 years and picture your kid on the podium. I tried swimming in high school and couldn’t remember how many laps to go back and forth. I would sometimes finish early; sometimes continue until the crowd laughter caused me to stop. My wife is the only person I have ever seen who appears to have perfect freestyle technique, yet moves backwards. She has invented the “moonwalk” of swimming

For the past couple of years we have also been taking our daughter to a city park for skateboard lessons. Yep, you heard me right. I said skateboard lessons. You might ask, “don’t most kids just learn to skateboard in the neighborhood cruising around with other kids?” The answer to that question is yes, but not at my house. I don’t know the first thing about skateboarding so I headed to a local skate shop and started asking around. Luckily the guys at No Comply Skate Shop didn’t laugh me out the door. They were pretty helpful in getting her the right board, the right shoes and helmet. Through the magic of radio, I was able to solicit for a skate coach. I didn’t know where to find one. This is not a very organized sport. It sort of thrives on lack of organization and rebellion. A listener called in and told me about her son Jason, who teaches skateboarding, swimming and drums. Perfect! I loved this guy before I even met him. Sign us up for all three! Once a week I take my daughter to see Jason and he hangs with her like she’s one of the bro’s. I sit there feeling like an old fart that doesn’t know how to skate, probably because I’m an old fart that doesn’t know how to skate. Her skating is coming along quite well, a far cry from the trial and crash method I grew up with.

Last summer we decided to take a family trip to southern California. My daughter started asking questions about the ocean and surfing. She’s 6 years old at this point. Little Earl Woods started talking to me in my imagination and I got on the Internet and on the phone to find out if anyone would teach my daughter to surf. We found a great local shop in Carlsbad and they could not have been better. They seemed as enthusiastic as me to begin my daughters surfing career. We showed up, they gave us a soft long board, the smallest wetsuit I have ever seen and a blonde haired stoner to escort us to the beach. Within 5 minutes he had her up on the board and surfing! We were thrilled. Not being an easy sport to participate in when you are an Austinite, we now find ourselves pulling our Airstream down to the coast as often as possible so our kid can get her surfing fix. It’s not as glamorous as So. Cal, but it works for a 1^st grader. What 1^st grader in central Texas has three surfboards? Mine does. I stand there in the waves getting pounded looking less like Mathew McCaughauhey and more like Jack Black. I proceed to pull her out into the pounding waves, watch her surf all the way in and swim in to exchange hi-fives with her over and over. In the meantime, my wife is trying to relax on a beach that is so covered in seaweed you can barely see her. The rest of the time she’s fighting off angry pelicans. We don’t mind because our daughter is having the time of her life.

We are entering into our fourth year of karate. What dad out there doesn’t want his little girl to “kick @ss” if she ever needs to? Every week we watch her go through the motions of basically, getting in a fight with air. For the most part toddler karate looks like Gary Busey having a bad dream. Fathers planning on raising a young karate student should be prepared for a lot of surprise blows to the groin. That’s all I’m saying. My karate experience you ask? I made some nunchucks in 7^th grade and then proceeded to split my head open within 5 minutes.

The list goes on and on. We now do horseback riding lessons. You guessed it. I’ve never ridden a horse, but I did watch Mr. Ed growing up. A part of me wishes she would pick one thing, stick with it and be the next Tiger Woods of the sport. A part of me is enjoying all of sports vicariously through her. It may be a completely foolish waste of time and money to round up all these lessons for her. Maybe I, like many other parents today, am screwing up my kid for good by not letting them learn anything on their own. I’m not sure and I won’t know until she’s grown up, will I? She’s great at all the things we’ve tackled over the years. I really don’t have any expectations for her to pursue a career with any one of these things. I just hope at the end of the day, she remembers that we were there, mom and dad. We were the expert of nothing, but we were there getting pounded by the waves, falling off the skateboard, getting hit where it really hurts and in the near future shoveling horse manure, I’m sure. The important thing is that we were there, loving every second of it.

It was six and a half years ago I became a father. My wife and I were ready; we had discussed it at great length considering it took time and a team of scientific experts to get pregnant. We read all the parenting literature available. We were level headed adults who felt everything falling into place.

Then the baby came… November 26^th, 2001, a day early. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but my wife knew something wasn’t “right”. An early Dr. visit turned into an emergency C-section. We almost lost our little girl. Had we waited another day, we would have most likely would have. The surgery saved her and brought into this world a perfect little girl. Within a few days were home and starting our new life as young, proud, optimistic parents. After about 4-5 days our daughter started crying, kept crying and seemed as if it was never going to stop. The crying started on November 30^th at about 6pm and lasted until August of 2002, about nine months! We had given birth to a colicky monster. I don’t think anyone can fully grasp the intensity of colic unless they have lived it. We looked for every solution on earth. Our doctors had no answers; they would just calm us down and tell us it will pass. We bought ever gimmick known to man to help; gas drops, special blankets, clothing, swings, mood cd’s, special lighting, and even a vibration machine that attached to the springs of her crib. Driving helped somewhat. We spent the better half of the year just “driving”.

During this time I was on my first year of an exciting radio job in Dallas. My co-workers had no idea we were falling apart at home. It seemed out of line and selfish to tell anyone, including friends, what was going on. My wife and I could slowly see each other unraveling. Everything became a fog with the lack of sleep. My wife and I were as worried about each other, as much as the baby, but we would both faked being “o.k.” I wanted so badly to let my wife sleep through just one night, but she was determined to breast feed the first year, but was only able to pump far enough ahead so that I could cover one feeding, occasionally. My wife, a person who has always had every single aspect of her life in order, was starting to look very, very scared. She knew the difficulties I was having at work and would try to let me sleep from midnight til 4:30am. I recall her on several occasions waking me up at 4:15 and asking me if she could just sleep for 15 minutes before I left. We hardly recognized each other. She was barely able to eat enough because she was always walking in circles, comforting the baby. My diet had gone to hell out of convenience. Translation; I was porking out, she was withering away. We were desperate, tired, confused and going insane. One thing that we understood was why there are so many stories of shaken babies in the news. We weren’t ever going to hurt her, but we understood that temporary insanity truly does exist. I remember one of my friends calling from Austin, the baby was wailing and I said to him “Don’t EVER have sex with a woman… EVER.” Then I held the phone up the crying. Throughout my life I have always been able to find humor in just about any situation. This was the last time I would be funny for awhile.

As my wife and I slip into pure lunacy, I came home with the news I had just been fired. I was offered my job back in Austin. I packed a suitcase and moved into a LaQuinta in SW Austin. A hotel was no place for a crying baby and two barking dogs. My wife stayed behind in Dallas to show the house to realtors. I would spend the day trying to get my job back to normal and the evenings trying to talk my wife off the ledge. I needed to get them to Austin a.s.a.p. I found a house that was just “o.k.” and offered full asking price. I offered the woman more if she could be out in a week. The day we walked into our new house we wanted to cry because it was such a project, there was almost no way we could move into it. We now had a crying baby, two dogs and house full of workers every day.

At about nine months the crying stopped. For the first time, we felt like we could venture out of the house and re-acclimate ourselves to society. Slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, we started to realize everything was going to be o.k. We hadn’t given birth to Satan’s child after all. Our daughter is six and a half now and an amazing well adjusted child. We felt guilty for so long because of all of the tension and worry she had to pick up from us. It took us years to shake it. This made us realize just how vulnerable our mental health is and what people can take for granted. We didn’t go “over the edge” but we got an awful damn good look over it.

Whenever we meet someone who tells us that they have or have had a baby with colic, I feel an instant connection. If they are going through it right then, I want to hug them and cry with them. Others won’t understand like we do. I would take in a complete stranger’s baby for one night if it meant then could get ONE nights sleep.

The closest I have ever come to killing another person was a “know it all” guy who explained to me that “Colic is a western culture problem and that if you just do the right thing, the problem doesn’t exist.” I considered killing this guy. Doing hard time and getting some rest didn’t seem so bad. My wife and I shared years later that we secretly wished for an illness or injury to hospitalize us during those nine months, just so we could get some sleep.

I know all parents feel like their child is “special”. Very few “special” children almost KILL their parents. We survived! We have grown stronger. I feel like seeing our daughter happy is twice as rewarding because of what we went through. Parenthood is an amazing thing. I don’t know if I would change a thing if I had to do it all over again. I like the way our little girl turned out and maybe the crying had something to do with it. We’re different too. I think we have more understanding and empathy for others. When we talk to new parents and ask if the baby is sleeping, we are genuinely happy when you say yes. It’s not just meaningless chit chat. If they say no, our hearts go out to them in a way that’s immeasurable.