The Guy's Guide to Surviving Toddlers, Tantrums, and Separation Anxiety - (yours, Not Your Kid's!) (Paperback)

This is a funny and poignant account of a child's first steps towards independence - from nappies to tantrums; from talking to talking back! The waiting game is the hardest part of early parenting. From wanting your newborn to sleep through the night to encouraging him to walk, eat and pee on his own, we want to get to what comes next. Like any Blackberry carrying, fast-food loving, internet-addicted guy's guy, Michael Crider was especially anxious for his son Ryan to get out of the infant stage. He looked forward to fishing with his son, to playing ball with him, to training him to be dad's designated driver. And then something horrible happened: Crider got his wish, and his baby boy was no longer such a baby. The little guy who could be silenced with a stuffed animal or a good burp had turned into a real live person who, at two going on twenty, started to need his parents less and less, someone moving daily towards independence right before his in-a-hurry father's eyes. A true story of one dad's attempts to hang onto his child while learning to let him begin to go, "The Guy's Guide to Toddlers, Tantrums and Separation Anxiety" is at once honest, heart-warming and hilarious. Crider asks himself "if this is what l've been looking forward to all these years, why am I blubbering like an infant?" This charming new book is the answer, and it gives new meaning to "be careful what you wish for!"