'Dan Gets A Minivan': 6 stories about the transition to family man

In "Dan Gets a Minivan," Dan Zevin shares how he made the transition from single guy to minivan-owning dad.

4. Dinner out without tantrums

Disney Channel stars Debby Ryan (l.) and Laura Marano (r.) Carlo Allegri/AP

Zevin says that every Saturday, he and his wife try to have a date night, but that this was tough at first because their son and daughter would begin crying when they would leave. "The babysitter would arrive around seven, and we'd spend the first fifteen dollars of her hourly rate tending to the children's shrieking separation anxiety," he wrote. "On a good night, we'd have them silenced by the thirty-dollar mark, at which point we'd bolt out and eat an egg roll around the block... But this was in the early stages of date night, when we still believed those baby books that said it's bad to sneak out on your kids without saying goodbye because they'll get an abandonment complex. Now we never say goodbye. When the sitter shows up, we just turn on the Disney Channel and disappear. Our kids couldn't care less if we ever come back. It's a win-win. Once we learned to abandon our children each Saturday night with no explanation, date night really blossomed."

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