At soccer games on Saturday, I’m the dad furthest down the sideline, away from any other parents. I am not chit-chatting with other parents typically, tending to slide in and out unnoticed. While I’m not anti-social, I’m not overly mingle-y during our weekly games. 

It’s not that I don’t like the parents I share virtually every weekend with, but with each passing season, I find myself being less “people-y.” Joining in with the friends-off-the-field type of comradery isn’t me. I guess I’m good with the friends I have and don’t feel a pressing need to make more.    

Most of the time, how friendly I am on the sidelines does not much matter. 

Other times, like on a recent Friday morning, it does. 

With no school because of spring break on Friday, Everett, my 10-year-old, agreed to play in a makeup game across town. My wife and I had work responsibilities that day so we sent our little guy with another trusted soccer parent, Kelly. 

The game began at 10:30 a.m. 

By 10:35, I had missed two calls from Kelly and one from my wife. When my phone rang for the fourth time, I broke from my conference call and picked up.

My wife’s frantic voice didn’t allow me to speak, “You have to get to the hospital now!”

I was confused but assumed whatever was going on centered on the kid outside of our care, Everett.    

“I just talked to Kelly,” she said. “Everett broke his arm and dislocated his wrist. She is taking him to E.R. now. He is in a lot of pain. You gotta go.” 

My minivan had never cut in and out of traffic like it did that morning. As I sped to meet my ailing little boy, my phone rang again, this time from a fellow sideline dad. 

I could tell my son was listening as the other dad began slowly. “Toby, I have Everett right here waiting for a ride to get his arm fixed up,” he said. “He is hurting and scared, so I wanted you to talk to him and tell him that you’ll be here soon, OK?”

For the next few minutes, while speeding down the interstate, this fellow dad and I calmed down my hurting little boy. Then, I heard Kelly’s voice.

“OK, let’s go get you better, Everett. Tell your dad you’ll see him soon!” 

I hung up. My mind raced. 

Mostly, I felt deep gratitude to those parents standing in for me – the same sideline parents I often shun in favor of a quiet patch of grass on the outskirts of the pitch on any given Saturday. These were parents I’d previously stopped short of calling friends. 

Until now. 

Suddenly, the importance of befriending other sideline parents mattered. It mattered A LOT. 

It mattered that the other parents at the field with Everett that day treated him as if he was their own. 

It mattered that they knew how to break the bad news to me and my wife without freaking us out completely. 

It mattered that my son, laying on the ground screaming in pain, could recognize being surrounded by adults he knew and could trust. 

It mattered that I knew he was in good, caring hands when I could not be there.   

This situation has forever changed the way I’ll think about my fellow parents on any team our kids play on. That day I learned any team he plays on needs to have a similar “I got your back” mentality among the parents watching the game. 

That type of sideline comradery does not mean everyone gets along all the time. It does not require getting together socially after the game for beers and wings. Hell, I can even have every parents’ back from my preferred position of solitude on the sideline. 

It does mean, though, that every time our kids take the field, we are there for each other and our children. 

I felt that sense of community after Everett was stable as I stood at the side of his hospital bed. He and I spent the downtime responding to kind texts about how he was doing from everyone on the team. We FaceTime’d with teammates who left the field scared to death at seeing Everett carried off the field crying. Everett reserved a special place on this new, bright red cast for only his teammates to autograph. I felt so proud as he thanked Kelly and that other dad for making him feel OK in my absence.

These are more than fellow sideline parents, each is an extension of us. Making friends with sideline parents doesn’t matter until it does – even for the most non-“people-y” of parents like me.

Photo: © athichoke.pim / Adobe Stock.   

Friends of a NYC Dads Group co-organizer are rallying to help defray costs for his recovery from a severe injury.

James Lopez, 42, who coordinates events on Staten Island, underwent successful brain surgery in April for a non-cancerous growth, according to his wife, Kim. While recovering later in the month, Lopez fell and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) to his thalamus, she told SILive.com. He has been in a coma since.

The thalamus is thought to act as a relay station between most incoming sensory and motor information to the brain’s cerebral cortex, or gray matter. It may also play a role in sleep, consciousness, alertness, learning and memory.

The father of three boys, ages 5 to 15, “will need intensive rehab and medical treatment which will be costly even with insurance,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page she set up. “This is not the reason or method that James would have ever chosen to raise funds but this is what is needed at this time.”

This week Lopez is scheduled to be transferred from a Staten Island hospital to a rehab facility in Manhattan, SILive.com reported.

+ Donate to James Lopez / #FatherhoodIsLit fund +

Lopez runs the website Cool4Dads and promotes his efforts under “Fatherhood Is Lit” or its hashtag on social media. A focus of his work is advocating for fathers of color.

“My dear friend, James Lopez, was the first person to open his heart to me in the fatherhood community,” wrote Sergio Rosario Diaz, founder of Soy Super Papá, an online community for Spanish speaking dads. “Always proud of his Puertorrican heritage, he made me feel at home everywhere we went. His perspective on fatherhood made me realize that it’s the simple things in life that matter.”

Lopez joined NYC Dads Group in 2015. He soon started organizing popular father/child events, such as crafts workshops at Home Depot and hip-hop graffiti tagging art lessons. He became a group co-organizer in 2018.

“James is one of City Dads Group’s biggest cheerleaders,” said Matt Schneider, co-founder of the organization. “He continues to be a source of wisdom, inspiration and friendship, not only for me, but for our group organizers all over the country.”

One of Lopez’s key messages in his work is “presence over presents,” a motto he often hashtagged. He attributed this philosophy of dads being actively involved with their children’s lives beyond being a provider to how his father raised him in the South Bronx.

“My dad spoiled me rotten. … But the one thing he gave me the most, which I didn’t appreciate until I was older, was his time,” he wrote in an article published on the NYC Dads blog in 2017. “His presence made a huge difference in my life. The toys, the gifts, all that, were just a quick fix. A gift loses value over time … If we are going to raise the bar every time then it has to be through our experiences and time together.”

‘One of the most passionate dads I know’

Colleagues in the fatherhood advocacy community quickly offered support and praise for Lopez, his message, his passion and his generosity.

“James Lopez has a larger-than-life smile, huge heart and magnetic personality. He’s one of the most passionate dads I know,” said City Dads Group co-founder Lance Somerfeld. “Beyond his contributions to City Dads Group and our fatherhood circles, James is a friend. He’s the man that’s always there for a bro hug, favor, or straight talk.”

Danny Reyes, creator of the SwaggerDad men’s parenting resource, first meet Lopez about nine years ago at a NYC Dads Group event. They “clicked right away,” he wrote.

“Once you get to know James he will take his shirt off his back to give it to someone who needs it. James is all about business but he takes pride in being a great father, that’s what brought us together, our passion for being great dads,” Reyes wrote.

RGV Dads founder Jesus T. Pena wrote Lopez’s work, among the first fatherhood resources he found online years ago, inspired him to start his Rio Grande Valley, Texas, group.

“I consider James to be a trailblazer in the dad community and a friend,” Pena wrote. “I related with James because he looks like me and has a similar taste in music!” 

Mike Dorsey, creator of the Black Fathers, NOW! podcast, wrote, “James has always prioritized his presence in the life of his family and set an example for all of us to follow. At this moment, I always want James to realize that he is actually also a ‘present’ for us fathers, too.”

Doug French, co-founder of Dad 2.0, wrote Lopez’s tenacity will help see him through his recovery.

“James is one of the most dynamic and focused people I know. He knows what he wants and works hard for it, and he’ll work harder than ever through this,” he said. “If history is any judge, he’ll turn his TBI into telekinesis before he’s done.”

As we got closer to the hospital, it all started to come back to me.

The bike trail that runs parallel to the Potomac River.

That Citibank sign at the intersection.

The quiet, picturesque street lined with 19th century single-family homes that led us to our destination. 

Prior to this particular Sunday evening, I hadn’t been to this part of town in a while. Yet, it somehow felt like just the other day.

About 90 minutes earlier, my wife started to go into labor. We’d timed the contractions and once they got close enough together, we called her doctor. Then we loaded up our bags and began the nearly 20-mile drive to the hospital where our baby girl would be delivered.

Once we made our way into the hospital lobby, a sense of deja vu came over me. A little over three years earlier we made the same drive, parked in the same garage and walked down the same hallway on our way to becoming parents for the first time with our son, Emory.

Here we were again, the second time around at fatherhood.

While the familiarity made the trip to the hospital less stressful, it also put me at ease as we got situated in the room and prepared for our daughter’s arrival. It was as if I was a seasoned veteran about to play a big game. I was experienced. I’d been here before. I knew the routine.

Doubt, uncertainty become confidence

With all the uncertainty that had flooded my brain in the previous months leading up to the transition from being a parent of one, to having multiple kids, going through the birthing process for the second time presented a calmness that was a bit surprising, yet very welcomed.

Don’t get me wrong. It was still a stressful experience. Watching my wife go through the physical strain of trying to safely bring a child into the world is nothing to be taken lightly. Especially since there was nothing I could do other than hold her hand and be as encouraging with my words as possible. And sure enough, like the first time, it was a long labor. As the day progressed, the intensity increased.

But having gone through something before sort of eliminates most of the shock value, even if it’s watching your wife give birth. That was me as Sunday turned into Monday. I was ready this time around when the anesthesiologist came in and administered the epidural. And when it was time to push, I knew exactly what I needed to do and where I needed to be to help the nurses out. Our baby girl, Eden, finally arrived at 5:23 p.m., on Dec. 27. That familiar feeling of pride when you first hold your child was back.

As we made our way back home two days later, again, it all came back to me. I knew what I’d be facing once we walked in and settled in as a family of four. As father of a newborn, I knew I’d be on call in the wee hours of the morning to give my wife some relief. Changing diapers and swaddling? Not a problem. I even created a folder on my iPhone for the thousands of pictures I’ll be taking as my daughter goes through her many changes. 

I’m more confident now than I was three years ago. Will things be exactly as they were with Emory? Of course not. But at least I have some idea of what I’m doing.

There’s comfort in knowing that the second time around at fatherhood I’m at least prepared. Prepared to be the best dad I can be for not one, but two now.

“We’re in an ambulance. Don’t freak out. They think Lynden broke his leg.” 

My heart sank. My wife’s voice was calm, though, despite our son screaming in the background.

That was April 23, the last soccer tournament of the spring, two weeks before a full summer of fun was to be had. Gone – just like that. 

Scared and bummed out, I forced myself to focus on the positive, thinking, ‘At least it’s the end of the season, Lynden will bounce back quickly.’

Nearly four months later, Lynden has not bounced back from his injury.

In fact, he is still limping, favoring his previously broken leg and complaining about pain if he attempts any physical activity. Despite being given full recovery status from his doctor, he is, in my view, at half speed.   

My patience with his slow recovery from this injury is waning. My sympathy is quickly turning into disappointment at his lack of grit. I am beginning to wonder if his elongated recovery says as much about me as my son.

Rehab of injury deliberately slow

Lynden’s cast and walking boot came off June 15. ‘Go time,’ I thought, assuming the two months of inactivity would have him itching to start moving again. We had marching orders from our doctors: a list of rehabilitation exercise to complete daily and no limitations on participation. 

Nothing, though, has happened. Lynden seldom does the prescribed rehab exercises.  He has completed short jogs only a handful of times over his summer months of freedom. And, no, he has not attempted to kick a ball with his left foot since the day his leg buckled on the pitch that April day. 

I have tried everything to get him going. From being supportive to helping devise a workout schedule to, now, demanding he complete the assigned injury rehab exercises in the morning each day without exception, I tried.

I can feel my frustration mounting. 

I shouldn’t have to urge him to get off his butt, and get to work, right? 

But I shouldn’t be the one who watches him limp while worrying that soccer practice starts in a few weeks. 

I shouldn’t have to create a workout schedule, another thing I will have to oversee so it is completed daily.

The simple fact may be that he may not want to come back from his injury as much as I want him to.

Does this reflect poorly on me?

Reflecting on the slow pace of Lynden’s return to the soccer field, I am facing a fact that I hadn’t before – I may be experiencing some personal self-worth vicariously through my kids’ activities. After all, many of our friends are connected to our children’s sports. Much of our non-working time is spent attending games, practices or traveling to the pitch. The financial and familial impact of these activities on all of us is all-encompassing.    

I may also be taking an ego hit as Lynden’s slow injury rehab casts doubt on the level (or lack thereof) of perseverance that my wife and I thought we had instilled in him. Our kids need to overcome adversity and, from my view, every limped step Lynden takes tells me that he might need a lesson in toughness.      

So, why do I care so much? 

After all, if Lynden does not return to the soccer team, I benefit – freeing up the time and money associated with keep him on the field. I guess I care because I know he’s capable. I care because I want my children to be active. Team sports, to me, are an excellent way to help our kids deal with diverse groups of people socially. And, somewhere deep maybe I care because all the efforts over the years feels for naught if this is the end of the road.   

My own self-interest is involved, and it should not be. After all, none of this ordeal – not the broken leg or Lynden’s slow return from it – has anything to do with me. 

From this point on, I’m done being frustrated. Everything will work out in due time.

I’m done trying to over zealously attempt to cultivate passions for my kids. I’ll provide the paths; it is their choice to continue or not.    

It has been a slow process for me to learn these lessons. Not, though, as labored, limped, and lethargic as my son’s comeback (or not) to the soccer field.

Injury rehab photo: © Elnur / Adobe Stock.

Gravity, an invisible constant keeping us all alive on this fragile, blue ball hurtling through space, provides humanity with many wonderful things.

How much fun would it be to throw a ball if it never returned to Earth? Birds would be entirely unimpressive without gravity. Airplanes? More like who-cares-planes. Pick a sport. Any sport. It’d be lame without gravity.

This potent force tugging on the International Space Station is the same potent force tugging on my 4-year-old son as he climbs a tree. In the great cosmic battle between gravity and a 4-year-old, gravity often wins.

“It’s not broken. It can’t be broken. He didn’t fall THAT far,” I asserted confidently.

My wife disagreed. In my defense, there was no visible bruising. Not even a scratch or a bump. The swelling was very minor. I felt confident a little ibuprofen and a good night’s sleep would fix it. “Father of the Year” nominee, right here.

The next day, my son had a sling. Day after that, a cast. A week after, my son was sitting in my lap as the doctor explained he would need surgery and pins. This was during the appointment where they were supposed to tell us everything was fine.

From this point, things began to accelerate. The doctor was sort of talking out loud, musing about his schedule, “We could do it today. Has he had anything to eat?”

I got a little flustered. “It? As in ‘surgery’? Today?” I said.

I think my son was processing it all better than me. Ultimately everything went fine. It was stressful and expensive, and everything took too long, and the doctor was late, and on and on it went.

No secret to this parenting trick

I’ve often wondered how I’d handle an emergency with my kids. Up until The Great Tree Fall of 2021, we had made zero trips to the emergency room. It’s been pretty smooth sailing, but with active and adventurous kids, the looming threat has always been there. Waiting. Stalking. This time, it was our turn.

Every urgent care trip isn’t life threatening, and every surgery on a 4-year-old isn’t worthy of a tense documentary. Worrying about what the first emergency would be like was far worse than the event itself. As moments played out, there was no panic. No freak out. My wife and I methodically and calmly navigated each situation. Not because we are particularly special (well, she is, anyway), but because that’s life. We handle it as it comes. From this great realization, I’ve learned a powerful secret, an epic life hack, the ultimate parenting trick, and I’m willing to share. Ready?

The trick is: There is no trick.

I have three children. People often say, “I don’t know how you do it.” I usually feel a little silly because I don’t know either. But every day they all get fed, bathed (usually), and go to bed on time (mostly). The next day, we do it again. That’s how we do it. I suspect this is how all great challenges are overcome. One small task after the next until it’s all gone. That’s the trick. That’s how we do it.

My son fell. I picked him up. We got him water. We got him ice. On and on the tiny tasks went until eventually my son arrived home from the hospital after his surgery and immediately began to act as if nothing had happened. Worrying probably shaved six to eight months off my life, but my boy was running around the house eager to show off his fresh, blue cast. Kids, man.

I wish I had a secret. I wish I had a special parenting trick. I wish some wizened sage had bestowed upon me great wisdom I could share with you. Instead, I’ve learned none of us have any idea what we’re doing. Not at first, anyway. And those who do have a clue, only have a clue because they blindly bumbled their way through the first trauma and have made it to the other side. As one of those formerly bumbling, clueless parents, let me encourage you with this: You’ll figure it out.

And remember, no matter how bad you may feel you’re screwing up, you once read about some guy who sent his son to bed with a broken arm. Surely you’ll do better than THAT guy.

Parenting trick photo: © Pixel-Shot / Adobe Stock.

Editor’s Note: This article by Chris Brandenburg of our Twin Cities Dads Group explains why and how he got one of the largest pediatric health systems in the country to change its system so stay-at-home parents are no longer classified as “unemployed” in its admission systems.

“She can hear, but it’s like hearing underwater,” the specialist said.

The ear infections had taken their toll on my daughter, my family and me. To see my bright little girl in pain, to know she was having trouble at school, to know the medicine wasn’t helping — it all led to the correct decision: tubes in her ears. We booked an appointment at the surgery center at Children’s Minnesota Hospital in Saint Paul and waited.

The day we checked my daughter in, my wife and I thought we were ready. Our nervous child, scheduled to have her tonsils and adenoids removed and the tubes placed, played with her doll and sang quietly nearby while the staff, kind and funny, asked us to go over the paperwork.

That’s when I saw it, and my heart sank.

I saw next to my name: “UNEMPLOYED.”

A few days earlier a nice woman from scheduling had asked what my profession was. “Stay-at-home dad,” I proudly replied.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said. Then, unknown to me at the time, she checked the only box on her input screen that made sense to her. The “UNEMPLOYED” one.

Seeing this at admissions, I felt everything all at once: shocked, angry, confused, upset. But I kept it all in. “Now isn’t the time,” I told myself. Stay composed. I’m here today for my child. This will have to wait.

Slights to stay-at-home parents

As a stay-at-home dad, I have become used to such a slight. I’ve changed the diapers, mixed the formula, and even taught my daughter, August, baby sign language. I’ve read the parenting books. I took the baby to visit family when my wife was tied down at work, all for my daughter. I generally relished being the “Dad at Home.” But in the seven years since my child’s birth, I’ve been called a babysitter. I’ve been asked where my wife was when I ran errands with my girl or took her to appointments where people expressed concern for my “sick” wife (“Uh, she’s at work,” I’d say). That all comes with the territory.

I was on edge that day at the hospital. My daughter had at least five ear infections, two hearing tests, and two trips to the ear-nose-and-throat specialist. Pain medicines, emails from the school nurse, heating pads, antibiotics, failed tests at school from being unable to hear. It had all led us to the surgery at Children’s Minnesota. With my awesome wife, Alea, at my side, I tackled them all. I had taken my kid to every doctor’s appointment she has ever had. On that day, I wasn’t prepared for more. I wasn’t ready for “UNEMPLOYED.”

The good news for my child is the surgeries went well. Children’s Minnesota did an awesome job keeping her in good spirits and managing her pain. When she refused a wheelchair as we left and instead asked, “Will you carry me, Daddy?” I knew all would be well. My daughter was counting on me now, and I had a responsibility to her. My hurt feelings would have to wait until my child fully recovered.

Be Remarkable

When she was, I wrote the one person I hoped could tackle this without controversy: Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota CEO Dr. Bob Bonar. I opened with the facts and then reminded him, “Your hospital is committed to children. It is the number one value in your mission statement: Kids First. Further down the list is another value, Be Remarkable,” I wrote. To me, that describes stay-at-home parents perfectly. We are committed to kids first, and we try to do the “Be Remarkable” part every day with them. We sacrifice careers, salaries, and sometimes even our sanity to raise our children in a way we think will benefit them. I asked him to help. To help challenge gender role stereotypes, to end the stigma of being a stay-at-home parent. I was asking his organization to Be Remarkable.

After a while, Dr. Bonar responded with what I had hoped he would say: “We have been working on correcting that problem.” He explained that their financial software had billing based on insurance and collection status with only one option for individuals who do not work outside of the home. That software didn’t give Children’s employees any option for recognizing a stay-at-home parent. That is, until my concern prompted him to contact the right people who finally added the option. Now, when a stay-at-home dad or mom calls the hospital to register their child, he or she enters the system with an appropriate title.

Is it a huge change? Does this additional option help doctors and nurses heal patients better? No. In the grand scheme of things, though, this small change can make a difference.

Most stay-at-home parents won’t realize they are now being classified correctly, but going forward they will simply know that Children’s Minnesota knows and cares about who they are. That Children’s Minnesota is open to making such small but meaningful changes tells me they really care about their goal of being remarkable. On behalf of stay-at-home parents, I want to thank Dr. Bob Bonar and Children’s Minnesota for listening and acting.

About the author

Chris Brandenburg is a husband, stay-at-home father and co-founder of Twin Cities Dads Group. He believes that to build strong communities, you need strong families and strong dads.

Editor’s Note: A cleft lip, with or without cleft palate, is the fourth most common birth defect in the United States, affecting one in 700 babies a year. In this guest post, Roberto Santiago writes about his inner turmoil reckoning his daughter’s quest to look “normal.”

It’s a weird thing when your 4-year-old gets a nose job.

Before you get upset, I’m not a pageant dad. This was a medically necessary nose job related to my daughter, Lou, being born with a cleft lip and palate.

Since the day she was born, our surgeon has repeated the phrase “normal by five” several hundred times. That phrase makes me uneasy. In my years working with people with disabilities, mostly as a sign language interpreter, I’ve come to distrust the term “normal.”

To many in disability and mental health communities, the word is oppressive. “Normal” creates a caste where a non-disabled person falsely assumes a superior position. The disabled person feels expected to aspire to normality, a state they may not be able to, or may be disinterested in reaching. “Normal” gives a statistical concept an inappropriate emotional connotation. I don’t want that burden placed on my little girl.

For Lou, we knew being “normal” would require three or four surgeries on her cleft lip and palate before she entered kindergarten. The latest one would be a lengthening of the columna, the external fleshy bit of the nose that divides the nostrils that her cleft caused to be very short and unable to grow. This gave her a vaguely cat-like look with nostrils more like little slits than round holes. It also caused folds inside the nostrils to easily clog.

Her recovery from that surgery took three weeks, two more than expected. She experienced discomfort rather than much outright pain during that time. The exception came when we had to clean the constant excretions and dried goop from her recovering nose. And at those times, the pain was not limited to her face.

“I hate how my nose looks!” she screamed. “I hate how it looks when it’s bloody. It looks terrible. I hate it. It looks gross and yucky and ugly. I wish I didn’t have a nose. I just look at my face and I wish I didn’t have any nose. Until today I just hate having a nose.”

This was my biggest fear before the surgery. I feared she’d hate her new look and want her old cat nose back.

My wife tried to reason with her, but Lou just kept yelling. Finally, I showed her a picture of Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies.

“See honey, this guy doesn’t have a nose. Is that what you want?” I asked.

“Oh. My. God,” she said.

She finally stopped protesting.

Still, the goop, the discomfort, the blood – none of that is what lingers with me. It’s how she looks.

When she was a baby we would speculate on who she would favor when she got older. She has my coloring, and she has her grandmother’s eyes, and we knew that her nose would be her own. It wouldn’t look like either of us because it was going to be created on an operating table. We knew we’d spend five years with one version of her face, and then it would change.

She looks like a different kid today. But she also still looks the same. This isn’t a Jennifer Grey situation here. The observation I keep coming back to is the one that makes me feel guilty for thinking it. She now looks “normal.”

Sure, the goal of the procedure was normal function, but the side effect was a “normal” look. I know I shouldn’t be using “normal.” I should use “typical” or some other term. But “normal” is the one that keeps coming to mind.

And I feel guilty about that.

I feel guilty about how relieved I am.

I feel guilty because the outcome for my daughter isn’t the outcome every cleft kid has.

We grow up being told looks don’t matter even while our peer interactions and media messages impress upon us that they do. Maybe my guilt is really just disappointment in myself. Disappointment that I’m shallow, that my daughter’s looks hold importance to me.

Lou will likely always have visible scars from her cleft lip surgeries. But each time she goes in she ends up looking more like a typical kid, and less like the baby we nicknamed Zoidberg after the cartoon lobster-man on Futurama. I’m happy to think she’ll be able to avoid being emotionally destroyed by her peers at school. I’m happy her social life won’t be hindered by deformity. (She’ll only have to face the usual horrible social pressures! Yay!)

It shouldn’t matter how she looks, especially not to me. That’s the message. That’s the ideal. But it does matter because I know how the world really works. So I’m conflicted over how her new face makes me feel. Because it’s a weird thing when your 4-year-old gets a nose job.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roberto Santiago could never decide on a job so he endeavors to have all of them. He is a writer, teacher, sign language interpreter, rugby referee and stay-at-home dad. He writes about the intersections of family, sports and culture at An Interdisciplinary Life. 

One thing I find interesting about having a child is how a mundane event, such as doing the laundry, can turn into a pediatric emergency room visit.

I’ve learned doing laundry in an apartment building with an 18-month-old is a great way to tire a kid out. My son enjoys running down the hallway, taking the elevator, pushing all the buttons, and saying hello to anyone he meets. After my little helper goes back and forth to the laundry room a few times, he’s wiped out. By the time I’m finally folding the clothes on our bed, I just let my son lay down and play with the pillow covers.

Watching him there, my mind relaxed and I enjoyed the moment. Then he leaped up, threw a cover over his head and proceeded to flip off the corner of the bed a la Greg Louganis.

I quickly picked him up in an attempt to ease the pain but, as he always does when it hurts really bad, he held his breath in the middle of a big cry. I thought to myself, no big deal.

But then he passed out. Just — boom.

Um! Oh shit!

He quickly snapped out of it, but the little dude definitely just passed out in the middle of crying.

He continued to cry as I held him and finally fell asleep on me. Instead of laying him down in the crib I held him and slept a little also. When I awoke he was still asleep on me but not for much longer: The sitter was arriving soon and I had to get ready for work.

I could tell there was something not right with him but couldn’t put my finger on it. I told the sitter what had happened and to keep an eye out for trouble. I was running late for work now and calling my wife before I left was not what I wanted to do and, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have since she proceeded to freak out. She promptly left work to take our son to the pediatric emergency room while took off for my job.

Soon I was clear across town with a dilemma: let my wife take care of the situation on her own or be with my family.

I chose the latter.

When I showed up at the pediatric emergency room, our son looked fine, but my wife had been waiting for an hour to see someone and that didn’t help calm frayed nerves.

One glaring takeaway from this experience was that when they finally saw our son, the doctors and nurses all asked my wife the questions. Nobody once asked me what happened until my wife mentioned she wasn’t there during the backflip, I was. When are people going to realize the mother isn’t always the person around the child? But I digress.

An hour turned into two and when our son was wheeled into a room for a CT scan. I gave up trying to tell everyone they were taking this a little too far. I really didn’t like it when the doctors gave my son some medicine to make him forget what was happening. That was the freakiest part of the entire night because my son was out of it. He looked dazed and exhausted.

We didn’t get home until 10 that night and all we could do was feed the boy and put him to sleep. What rocked my already fragile ego as a good parent was when my wife jokingly said, “Well, if he has problems later we know it’s from you letting him do a back flip off the bed.”

Ouch! That hurts.

I was at Barnes & Noble last weekend “attempting” to read some stories with my little guy, but it is challenging because there are so many distractions – Thomas the Train Table, Escalators, screaming kids, etc. Jake always picks out the same couple of books as we head over to our private reading area.  I try to pick out a book or two that we have never read to keep it interesting for me as well.  One of the books that I selected was a classic that I enjoyed as a child – Five Little Monkeys. You know the words:

“Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama (could be Dada these days) called the Doctor and the Doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!””

I always enjoyed this popular story – lots of repetition and good illustrations. I never thought much about the message in the story…it’s probably a good rule of thumb to NOT let your kids jump on the bed.  I am not a helicopter parent, and therefore, give my son a lot of room for self exploration that sometimes result in injuries. We live in a small apartment and we need to be creative in the ways we allow our children to burn off energy – hide and seek, obstacle courses, and jumping off the couch or bed.

This week I had a little intellectual wakeup call. Fortunately, my little guy is usually fine from falling off the bed or couch.  Consequently, I may need to change some of our rules about our rough play after I read Household Injuries, and How Kids Get Them by Michael Tortorello in the New York Times. After reading it twice, I shared it with my wife who also gives our son a lot of leeway on his bed jumping activities.

A small excerpt: Start with the bed. Children should not jump on it, said Dr. Joan Bregstein, a pediatric emergency room physician at New York-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Parents already know this rule. They have been heard to recite it a few hundred times in the course of an afternoon.

What they may not know about are the injuries that occur when leaping children land on a nightstand or dresser.  As a result, Dr. Bregstein said, she sees many lacerations “on the forehead, or on the top of the head, the back of the head.”

So, if you are like me, a relaxed dad when it comes to rough play – you will make a decision based on the information in this article:

1. Pretend you did not read it and continue your play.

2. Know the consequences and step up the supervision a bit.

3. Helicopter your kid and rule out the bed as an area they can play on.

Dads, where do you stand?

For the record, if this article was not enough to shake you up a little, try this related article on for size: With Kids and Coffee tables, It’s Trip, Fall, Ouch!

If you read about my son’s first entanglement with getting stitches a few months ago, then you know that this is not a new experience for us. Consequently, it still sucks!

Being an NYC kid, my son does not get as much exposure to walking up and down steps as a suburban child might. That said, he still enjoys the opportunity when it comes his way. The other day he was climbing the concrete steps on our playground – as he likes to do on a daily basis. He had his right hand out and was using the wall as leverage in making his ascent. I was right behind him to make sure he did not fall backward. On the final step, he lost his balance, and tipped over to the side nailing his mouth into the concrete. I saw the blood, but most bleeders in the mouth look a lot worse than they really are. As I inspected his mouth more closely, I was trying to make sense of the cut on the outside of his mouth as well as the gash on the inside of his lip. “Crap, I can’t believe he did that.” One of his bottom teeth managed to puncture a hole right through his lower lip and came out the other side (sorry to the squeamish for this visual).

The next hour was a bit of a blur. We headed straight to our Pediatrician’s office two blocks away (one bonus to living in NYC) to get the acknowledgement that what I was looking at was in fact true. We were seen within minutes & given the counsel that this “gash will require some sutures.” Then, most parents would whisk their child off to the ER at the local hospital. Not this dad. Nope, one advantage to having gone through this miserable process before is that we have a great pediatric plastic surgeon on speed dial!

We strolled another fifteen blocks to visit our plastic surgeon. This guy was the man! It was after hours – he was doing some paperwork in the office and his staff had gone home for the day, but he still welcomed us in. In & Out in 30 minutes with four new dissolvable stitches. Similar to last time, my son was a champ. The plastic surgeon noted that without his staff to assist, if my son was “difficult,” we would have had to do the brief procedure at an ER with some extra sets of hands. Jake rolled with the punches and I tried to as well. The kid is not even two yet, and already two episodes with stitches. I certainly hope this not a trend or a precursor of things to come.

Being the dad that I am, I took Jake back to the scene of the crime the following day, and kept practicing going up & down the steps on the staircase. Gotta move on and face our fears…

Dads – a few lessons learned here: Be careful. Accidents can happen even when you are closely watching your child. Most importantly, find a good pediatric plastic surgeon and have their number in your phone in case something like this happens to you in the future.