BLOG RERUN: There are times I really wish I had the wisdom of Solomon

NOTE: This post originally ran here on the blog on September 18, 2013. I bring it back 11 years later, noting that while I still don't have the wisdom of Solomon, I am thankfully no longer called upon to settle these sorts of kerfuffles among my kids.

When you have multiple children, one of your chief roles as a parent is to serve as mediator for arguments, disputes and disagreements of all kinds.

Most of the time this is a fairly easy job. One child hits another? Punishment is duly meted out to the hitter. Two little ones want the same toy at the same time? You immediately devise a system of sharing while extolling the virtues of compromise. Someone uses someone else's hair straightener without asking? It only takes a few seconds to figure out who's in the wrong.

But then there are times when my children come to me with a problem I simply can't solve.

Case in point: Child A and Child B approach me to resolve the question of who should have control of the living room TV for the next two hours. Child A will argue that she wants to watch a movie and Child B has been playing Xbox on the TV for the past hour.

Which seems pretty clear cut. You take the TV, Child A, because it's rightly your turn. Enjoy your movie.

But not so fast. Child B will counter that his sibling had the TV for two whole hours yesterday, so he still has at least one hour of television control coming to him. Which also seems fair.

And suddenly the jury is deadlocked. Both parties make convincing cases and I have no idea how to rule. It's at this point that I have three options:

(A) Make a judgment call and recognize that one child is going to feel slighted (and perhaps rightly so)

(B) Sit with the two combatants and negotiate a deal

(C) Slowly sneak away and hope that my wife will step in and solve this riddle

More often than not, I choose "C." Which I realize is unfair to my overtaxed wife, but "A" and "B" both involve a level of effort to which I'm not necessarily willing to commit.

I also enjoy it when one of the kids blatantly does something wrong to his/her sibling, then argues that the sibling did the same thing to them yesterday or last week or whenever.

While this may be true, I point out that just because he/she did it to you, it in no way allows you to do it back to them. This is not how our justice system works, yet this concept repeatedly baffles them. My children are the ultimate purveyors of "an eye for an eye."

Then there are the habitual offenders in our house. And here I'm thinking specifically of my 15-year-old son Jared. He constantly teases and torments his little brother Jack. I tell him not to do this, and he stops. But he does it again the next day. I administer some form of discipline, so he stops. Then he does it again soon after.

This goes on and on. Whatever I do to him, whatever I take away from him, it seems to have no long-term effect. Jared is evil, and his evil nature forces its way to the surface whenever he's in the presence of his younger brother.  (2024 UPDATE: Jared has grown into an outstanding young man, it should be noted.)

Which is a shame, really, because in those times when Jared gets along with Jack and does things with him, Jack loves it. Little boys desperately want and need the approval of their older brothers, and I see that in Jack, yet Jared continues his evil ways.

Short of having him thrown into prison – which I HAVE considered – I'm not sure how to get Jared to stop acting this way. I'm hoping he grows out of it soon. And by "soon" I mean "by the time he's 30." But I'm not holding my breath.

As if we needed more proof that evil exists in this world, along come Bulgarian split squats

(NOTE: I'm in France right now, but I'm not chronicling that trip here. Terry is mostly doing that for us on Facebook, if for whatever reason you want to look her up and see some vacation photos. I think they're viewable by anyone. I will say this, though: Whenever I get to speak French to a French person, I inevitably sounds like Pepe Le Pew because I'm trying so hard to sound French. I need to back off a little...)

Let me say two quick things about my newly formed strength training habit:

1. I have given much of the credit for me taking up the gym life to my daughter Elissa, and rightly so, but my son Jared also had a hand in this. He has been lifting for years, which not only provided inspiration but also led him to piece together a pretty formidable home gym in the back room of our basement (on his own time and using his own money). I now benefit from having that gym. Also, today is Jared's 26th birthday, and he's a good guy, so please wish him a happy happy.
   
   
2. This is the third or fourth time I've written about lifting in the past month, but please rest assured that this is not going to turn into a gym bro blog or anything. It's just that I write 150 or so new posts a year, and they're generally based on what's new in my life as a husband, a dad, and a middle-aged guy. Lifting is still new to me, so it's probably not surprising that I've been writing about it. I'll dial it back, I promise.

I'm writing this post the morning of July 4th. Yesterday I was at the gym with my trainer Kirk for leg day. I've already learned that leg days always lead to soreness 24 hours later, and that is certainly the case now. My quadriceps are killing me.

The primary reason for that is the exercise demonstrated in the video above: the Bulgarian split squat. I hadn't done this exercise before, and I wasn't particularly thrilled to do it when Kirk's explanation of it began with, "This is pretty much everyone's least favorite exercise."

Great!

In the video it appears to be innocuous enough, but man, it's a killer. Kirk had me do two sets on each leg. Each set consisted of 10 repetitions holding a dumbbell, then 10 additional reps with just body weight.

You would think the body weight reps are a welcome reprieve after getting rid of the dumbbell, but no. They are somehow even worse, probably because your legs are already awash in burning lactic acid after the dumbbell reps.

You know what was even worse? Kirk – a seemingly nice guy who has a hidden masochistic streak a mile wide – gave me a heavier dumbbell to use for the second set.

I walked away from Bulgarian split squats with a decidedly wobbly gait. My legs were the kind of rubbery I had only seen before when Mike Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick to win the heavyweight title in 1986.

I will admit, though, that Bulgarian split squats taught me something important. Going to the gym five times a week and activating muscles I haven't used in years has obvious physical benefits when it comes to strength, flexibility, mobility, etc.

But just as important, I've found, is the way in which weight lifting is making me mentally stronger. As Kirk says, it's all about your willingness to approach and break through the threshold.

That threshold is one of physical discomfort, sure, but it plays out just as much in your head as it does in your biceps or your hamstrings.

When we get to the final set of an exercise and Kirk tells me the goal is "8 to 10 reps," I naturally want to hit 10. When it starts getting tough only 5 reps in, though, it becomes a mental game. Do I struggle my way to the minimum of 8 and stop there? Or do I willingly embrace the pain (and potential failure) of those 9th and 10th reps?

So far it has gone both ways for me. Sometimes I'll get to that minimum and simply say, "That's it, I'm done." Other times I've sucked it up and gutted out those 9th and 10th reps.

I feel much more satisfied when I take the tougher road, and I'm working on the best mental approach to ensuring that happens consistently.

In the meantime, the key lesson to take away here is perhaps obvious: Bulgarian split squats are, at their core, the work of demons.

There are times when I really wish I had the wisdom of Solomon

When you have multiple children, one of your chief roles as a parent is to serve as mediator for arguments, disputes and disagreements of all kinds.

Most of the time this is a fairly easy job. One child hits another? Punishment is duly meted out to the hitter. Two little ones want the same toy at the same time? You immediately devise a system of sharing while extolling the virtues of compromise. Someone uses someone else's hair straightener without asking? It only takes a few seconds to figure out who's in the wrong.

But then there are times when my children come to me with a problem I simply can't solve.

Case in point: Child A and Child B approach me to resolve the question of who should have control of the living room TV for the next two hours. Child A will argue that she wants to watch a movie and Child B has been playing Xbox on the TV for the past hour.

Which seems pretty clear-cut. You take the TV, Child A, because it's rightly your turn. Enjoy your movie.

But not so fast. Child B will counter that his sibling had the TV for two whole hours yesterday, so he still has at least one hour of television control coming to him. Which also seems fair.

And suddenly the jury is deadlocked. Both parties make convincing cases, and I have no idea how to rule here. It's at this point that I have three options:

(A) Make a judgment call and recognize that one child is going to feel slighted (and perhaps rightly so)

(B) Sit with the two combatants and negotiate a deal

(C) Slowly sneak away and hope that my wife will step in and solve this riddle

More often than not, I choose "C." Which I realize is unfair to my overtaxed wife, but "A" and "B" both involve a level of effort to which I'm not necessarily willing to commit.

I also enjoy it when one of the kids blatantly does something wrong to his/her sibling, then argues that the sibling did the exact same thing to them yesterday or last week or whenever.

While this may be true, I point out that just because he/she did it to you, it in no way allows you to do it back to them. This is not how our justice system works, yet this concept repeatedly baffles them. My children are the ultimate purveyors of "an eye for an eye."

Then there are the habitual offenders in our house. And here I'm thinking specifically of my 15-year-old son, Jared. He constantly teases and torments his little brother, Jack. I tell him not to do this, and he stops. But he does it again the next day. I smack him and/or administer some other form of discipline, so he stops. Then he does it again soon after.

This goes on and on. Whatever I do to him, whatever I take away from him, it seems to have no long-term effect. Jared is evil, and his evil nature forces its way to the surface whenever he's in the presence of his younger brother.

Which is a shame, really, because in those times when Jared gets along with Jack and does things with him, Jack loves it. Little boys desperately want and need the approval of their older brothers, and I see that in Jack, yet Jared continues his evil ways.

Short of having him thrown into prison - which I HAVE considered, it should be noted - I'm not sure how to get Jared to stop acting this way. I'm hoping he grows out of it soon. And by "soon" I mean "by the time he's 30." But I'm not holding my breath.