Parenting & Personal(ity) Differences

The other night Tony and I were watching “The Singing Bee”. It’s a modern day “Name That Tune”. I’m a fountain of knowledge when it comes to mindless trivia and Tony’s knowledge in music lyrics always surprises me. It is very obvious to me when we watch that show that we grew up in completely different worlds – up until the point when we started dating. If there’s an old R&B or country song chances are he’s got the lyrics. I have to wait until a Duran Duran song pops up. In the episode we were watching the contestant was challenged to fill in the missing words to “this classic 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical number from The Sound of Music”. I shouted out “Oooh!!! I’ve got this one!” which I normally yell out facetiously when they throw completely obscure stuff on there. Cue music. Cue me singing the Do A Deer (Do Re Mi) song word for word. Tony’s jaw hit the floor. He swears he’s never heard the song before! I looked at him like he was nuts and insisted that everyone knows that song. He bet me that nobody else knows that song and I’m just a musical freak.

How is that possible? That song is a staple of my youth. I used to hang in my room with an old phonograph player and listen to The Sound of Music over and over and over. It was one of the 2 or 3 records I owned as a kid. Do Re Mi was one of the songs I loved to play on our little electric organ. I can still bang it out on my kids xylophone.

But I guess it comes down to who raised you. “Mrs. Robinson” is hardly a Broadway musical kinda mom. Her house is still adorned with an Elvis shrine (seriously). I remember growing up listening and singing along to Neil Diamond, John Denver, the Chieftans, James Galway, and various show tunes like The Sound of Music. Tony grew up with Elvis, Hank Williams and Reba.

It just solidifies that we are very different people, having been raised in very different ways, and our parenting skills will be just as different.

Which brings me around to the real reason for this post….

As I said in my last post, I’m taking a few things to heart about the holidays this year and how I want to form them for my kids. I spoke to Tony about the ideas and he seemed to be on board with me. With some very notable differences.

My intention/goal/idea/plan was to continue Christmas as normal, reducing the amount of presents in general and specifically reducing the amount credited to Santa. I thought this was the easiest of the goals as discussion wouldn’t be needed. Kids wake up on Christmas morning to a house with presents! And stockings! And magic! and happiness follows. And no "Santa brought me" tally needed.

Except that Tony decided to lay out a huge proclamation to the boys last night that Santa was only going to bring them one present. WTF?!!! Hysterics followed. Domino woke up this morning crying that “Dad told me a big lie that Santa will only bring me one present!”. I am trying my best to help Domino wrap his head around all that he will be given, I don’t want to completely discount what Tony said because I believe we’re supposed to be “on the same team”, but I’m also really pissed off that it’s even a topic of discussion in the first place. Why in the world would he say that to a 5 year old and a 4 year old?! When Domino's vocal list of the things that Santa is going to bring him started to grow, I told him "I'm sure Santa will bring you things that you'll love" and he was fine with that.

Tony's so on (over)board with the “one present from Santa” concept I expected he’d be on board with the “I wonder…” aspect of Santa. The one where we never speak of Santa as truth, but more with wonder and curiosity. He’s soooo not going along with that. He’s playing the Santa card left and right, threatening to tell Santa to not bring anything, to tell Santa to bring the boys lumps of coal if they don’t start following directions.

If you want to give Santa that much power over your children’s behavior, Santa better be willing to throw down more than one present.

I think I need to go expose the kids to some Julie Andrews.