{"id":7458,"date":"2021-05-22T11:54:44","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T17:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=7458"},"modified":"2021-05-22T11:54:44","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T17:54:44","slug":"the-new-father-a-dads-guide-to-the-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=7458","title":{"rendered":"The New Father: A Dad&#8217;s Guide to the First Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7460\" src=\"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-682x1024.jpg 682w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL-624x936.jpg 624w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/918lFrei0xL.jpg 1706w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>I cannot decide whether it&#8217;s weirder to be reading non-fiction, or to be reading a book gradually over the course of a year. Both are pretty weird! Like, maybe histories would be less weird? History is just non-fiction with a plot and a throughline. Although I guess a book about what to expect over the course of a year of childhood growth is almost that too? But histories have characters, which this does not, super-disgusting anecdotes about mistaken pumpkin puree notwithstanding.<\/p>\n<p>As you may have guessed by this point in the review, my son is nearing a year old. And thusly I have been reading on a (mostly) month ahead basis, <a title=\"The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year by Armin Brott, at Amazon\" href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/New-Father-Dads-Guide-First\/dp\/0789211777\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the first of Armin Brott&#8217;s New Father trilogy<\/a>(?), wherein I learn what to do over the course of a year.<\/p>\n<p>You are now asking yourself two questions. And the answer to the first is that it&#8217;s a helpful book in the same ways that <a title=\"The second half of my review of The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be\" href=\"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=7018\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the pregnancy book<\/a> was. Not quite <em>as<\/em> helpful, and my uninformed speculation from a non-female perspective as to why is that there are more different types of kids than there are types of pregnancies. Or maybe I&#8217;m just more invested in how closely he hews to the baby averages than I was in how closely we hewed to the pregnancy averages? Also feasible.<\/p>\n<p>The answer to the second question is that I have done at best a mediocre job following the presented advice. I&#8217;m about as bad at money with him as I am at money with me. We play, but I never really wrestle with him, which came up a lot in the book? I don&#8217;t really understand how to wrestle with someone that small, to be honest. I feel like he&#8217;s been consistently months ahead on the physical scale[1] and on the manipulation scale[2], but maybe farther behind than I want him to be on the verbal scale? Like, this &#8220;you&#8217;ve made it through a year&#8221; chapter I just read, which to be fair is still four weeks away, expects him to be able to point at his body parts when we tell him to, and I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve ever tried to get him to know all his body parts before reading that. Which as we all know means I&#8217;m objectively a bad father. He might be able to say two words by now, but then again maybe not, and is expected to have a six plus word vocabulary in the aforementioned four weeks. Maybe he will! Or maybe I&#8217;m, again, objectively bad at this.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m 95% not serious about my reactions, but this also goes back to my &#8220;more invested&#8221; thing from before. Because the goal of the pregnancy book was to end up with a baby, which is pretty much a binary outcome. Whereas the goal of this book (and the subsequent ones I presume) is to make the existing infant into a good human who can successfully navigate the world. That is, uh, non-binary, you know? It is <em>open-ended<\/em>. Which means that yeah, any moment where he&#8217;s not on target or better is a moment for me to feel bad about myself. So that&#8217;s great.<\/p>\n<p>For no fault of the book&#8217;s own, I&#8217;m not sure whether I want the sequel. Probably should, though? It is almost certainly better to use and resent the map than to kick it in the creek.[3]<\/p>\n<p>[1] Rolling over, standing, walking, etc. Gross body movements. (As opposed to fine.)<br \/>\n[2] Ha ha, but no. Here I mean fine body movements (as opposed to gross), like unscrewing lids, putting objects in holes, etc.<br \/>\n[3] I&#8217;ve made myself sad, as that reference was more or less for one person, who isn&#8217;t alive to see it. Or the kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I cannot decide whether it&#8217;s weirder to be reading non-fiction, or to be reading a book gradually over the course of a year. Both are pretty weird! Like, maybe histories would be less weird? History is just non-fiction with a plot and a throughline. Although I guess a book about what to expect over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1259,1246],"class_list":["post-7458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-non-fiction","tag-self-help"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7462,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions\/7462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}