My Son the Photographer...and Painful Lessons in Parenting

Anthon is my mini-me. I feel flattered that he likes things that I like. He likes tacos, yakitori, sports, and a lot of other things that I like. He's a morning person like me, which I think is unfortunate for Shelley.

Shortly before we left for Japan, Shelley gave him her old 35mm point-and-shoot film camera. It's funny to see him act out how he perceives me and Shelley's incessant picture taking of him. Anthon puts the camera up to his eye, backwards no less, and says, "Dad, look at me, say cheese." He pretends to take the picture and without fail says in a matter of fact voice, "cute." When he's feeling like a true photographer, he hunts for my tripod, pulls it out and pretends that's his camera.

I thought that this would be the end of my post, but unfortunately, I learned a really interesting lesson about parenthood from Anthon, his camera and my lack of seeing the forest for the trees.

We had a family outing one night and I brought my camera along to take some pictures. Anthon ran to get his camera, but I told him that he couldn't bring it along for a variety of reasons, namely he would drop it and because I said so. He freaked out of course and resisted any attempts by me to put it back in his room. I kept getting mad because he wasn't obeying his Dad and it never occured to until we were making our way to the train station that the only reason he wanted to bring his camera was because I brought my camera. It killed me to think that I was being so focused on Anthon obeying me that I totally missed the intent of his actions.


I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson. I wore a french cuff shirt to church on Sunday and I wore the cuff links that Anthon gave me for Father's Day last year. Anthon of course wanted to wear cuff links like his Dad to church. Well, I've never seen a french cuff shirt for a two year old...have you? Shelley helped Anthon put on one of my cuff links into his shirt and he was happy and showed it off that day to others.

Parenting, Anthon Style

It is rare that you get good honest insight into your parenting skills. On an almost daily basis, Anthon parents his stuffed animals with many striking similarities to how we parent Anthon. This poor little stuffed kitten, pictured on the left, has been given a time-out for apparently hitting Shelley. This isn't the first time it's happened and it's hardly the kitty's fault. Anthon normally takes the kitty and bumps him against either me or Shelley. After the offense, Anthon took the kitty and put him on the piano bench, giving him a timeout. Anthon normally gets a timeout by having to sit on small red chair underneath a picture of Jesus...not on purpose, mind you. Jesus was just there coincidentally!

When Anthon deemed the kitty ready to be done with his timeout, he went up to him, put his hand on the kitty's face and made the kitty look at Anthon. We do this to Anthon to make sure he looks us in the eye when we tell him what he did to deserve the timeout. Finally, Anthon says to the kitty, "no, no, kitty, flick cheek" and Anthon gave the kitty a tiny flick on the cheek - as seen in the picture to the right. While we hate doing it, we sometimes will give Anthon a light flick on the cheek as a means to punish him when timeouts don't work. To show the stuffed kitty that there were no hard feelings, he walked him into the kitchen and declared to Shelley that the kitty was going to have a cupcake now. I think this was Anthon's sly attempt at getting a cupcake for himself, however. The best part about the timeouts is the reconciliation afterwards. It's never fun to punish your kids and I feel much better when I get a chance to tell Anthon that I love him. And no, we don't give him a cupcake after every timeout. Anthon would be much heavier if there the case.

Anthon certainly revels in being the parent to his stuffed animals. And it doesn't stop at discipline. Anthon has wanted to put his animals in the tub, tuck them in at night, put a diaper on them, hush their cries, put a binky in their mouths and brush their teeth.

So, We're Parents of an Axe Murderer?

File this story under the "wait and see" category because we can't be sure what path Anthon will travel down in his life. He can be a doctor or lawyer, or anything he wants to be. A sword wielding limb dismemberer can't be ruled out quite yet, either. We didn't know Anthon had channeled King Arthur from Monty Python's Holy Grail, but he seems to take a keen liking to using his foam USC Trojan sword, donated by the man sitting next to us at the USC vs. Oregon State game, to hack at our friends Jono and Jill.

On our way to church the next day, after a fun weekend with Jill and Jono had come to an end, a visibly sad Anthon clutched to his foam sword in the car and kept saying in a very sad voice, "Jill, Jono, slice."

We'll have to keep an eye on Anthon to see if he displays any more of this child-like glee over de-limbing people. Just as a precaution, however, Shelley and I are making sure the Cutco knives aren't anywhere within grabbing distance!

Click on the picture below to see Anthon play Hack-a-Jono with a foam Trojan sword.