Shit They Don't Tell You About Fatherhood: You're Always Late

Shit They Don’t Tell You About Fatherhood: You’re Always Late

Once you’re baby becomes a toddler, you will never be on time again. Ever. Not an exaggeration. Your friends will simply assume that when you say you’ll be somewhere at 10 a.m. on Monday, it means 10:30 a.m. And that’s if things go well. If not, it means Thursday. You will also learn how to commute to work at speeds that would make a top fuel dragsters look like a Radio Flyer.

And if you think you’re too organized for this to happen, trust me. It applies to pretty much everyone because even militantly anal clock-watchers will experience this often enough to either adapt or go bat-shit insane.

My wife and I used to battle to get the boys through the morning routine — wake up, go potty, dress for school, eat breakfast, get in the car and depart. As my mother-in-law says, it’s not rocket surgery. The problem for us (and other parents) is any number of these steps could and inevitably do take much longer than planned. For example, whether or not Boone decides to spend 15 minutes on the potty remains a wild card.

Why do these seemingly simple steps take so long? Pick any combination of the choices below — and for parents of twins or triplets, multiply it:

Refusing to eat
Wanting to be fed by one of us
Wanting to be held by one of us (rather than letting us get dressed)
Arguing for why Go Diego Go! should be watched
Running and/or screaming
Unhappiness with choice of clothing (even if said child picked it out)
Unhappiness with the choice of breakfast (even if said child picked it out)
More running and/or screaming
Random (and sometimes imagined) injury sustained while running and/or screaming
Hunting for specific toy that was absently flung across the room the previous night
Impromptu game of hide-and-seek
Conversation about whether or not giraffes dance
Potty accident
Puking caused by unforeseen illness
Trying to ride the dog like a Shetland pony
Simple lollygagging
Even more running and/or screaming

And adjusting the timeline to start the process earlier doesn’t help. It just gives your child more time to mess around. Toddlers simply have too much to do to adhere to your randomly chosen schedule. Just getting in the car takes 10 minutes unless of course you’ve allotted 10 minutes for it in which case it will take 20 minutes.

This may sound absolutely infuriating, but my wife and I have hit upon a fantastically simple solution: We made peace with being late. We go to bed each night, knowing the next morning will feature us barking instructions and requests at the boys over and over, followed by a mad dash to work. And because of that adjustment, we sleep better and enjoy our mornings more. Sometimes, we even prolong that conversation about dancing giraffes.