As many parents will tell you, that first baby is like the crash test dummie in a vehicle you had no intention of wrecking. You try your damnedest. But the bitch of on-the-job training is how royally you can still F up while diligently reading the instructions. And the true nightmare of parenting is that there ARE no instructions. Just a process of trial and error--with well-meaning people (or unsolicited strangers) dropping their two cents along the way. Looking back, it’s clear my first born got the bulk of my attention, but only a fraction of the knowledge I gained from those first-timer failures and the second chances our second son awarded me.
First of all, I like my rules and schedules—and we all know that babies could not give less of a shit about either. I had a strict schedule for nursing my firstborn because he had a tongue-tie, so it took him FOREVER to eat and it was monumentally painful for me until after the 2 month mark. I didn’t want him to starve, but I also couldn’t stand feeding one second longer than I had to. So feedings were once every 3 hours. No exceptions. I’m lucky he was able to gain weight—because after feeding my second son whenever the hell he wanted all day long, it occurred to me that big brother was probably hungry WAY more often than Mommy had the stamina to entertain. Same deal with sleeping through the night. Apparently, my lax lifestyle of sleeping at least 6 hours nightly for 32 years had completely spoiled me for the sleepless tragedy of motherhood. After less than 4 weeks of nursing half the night, I was damned and determined to sleep in my own F’ing bed for at least 5 consecutive hours—and somehow, my firstborn obliged. At just one month old. Almost to the day. For the first-time mom I was, it couldn’t have come a second too soon—but after living through my second son, who STILL wakes me up nearly every night to find a lost lovee or to ask if it’s morning yet, I realize just how rare it was that my first baby slept so well so soon.
My rules and schedules were also important for behavior management—which prior to having my own kids, I’d only had to engage in for 30-minute increments at time, before the inevitable hand-off to a teacher or parent. I’d worked with kids daily for my job, but I’d never had to follow through on being in charge of any other person for a full 24 hours. After a decade of exposure to developmental delays and disorders, I understood how those issues could complicate your interactions with kids--but I easily forgot that even the most typical child can still exhibit very challenging behavior. There are certain things all kids do that drive us crazy, infuriate us, and make us seriously consider whether they (or we) are harboring a hidden psycho in those garden-variety flaws. And until those kids are yours, forever and always, for better or worse, there’s nothing in the world that can truly prepare you for the constancy of managing your child’s behavior. As a result, my firstborn got spanked WAY more than his younger brother—who quite honestly, does infinitely more aggravating things sometimes. Because, after living once through the asinine power struggles that rule your life from the 18-month mark on, I realized two things: That all kids are intermittent assholes at this age and that this subsequent kid is no more or less of an asshole in his own way than his brother. Suddenly, the illusion that your spanking will magically end the jack-assery is replaced by an exasperated sigh, a silent prayer, and an often audible scream at the understanding that this, too, shall pass and morph into the next developmentally exhausting thing--even if you're consumed with white-hot rage in the moment.
I'll be honest, spanking is still in the back pocket--frequently threatened, but issued much less often in favor of other strategies. For a while, the kids both kept charts filled with stickers for all the good things they did in a day—both to recognize their moments of positive behavior and to remind me at the end of a LONG day that there were those positive moments, however few. In an effort to harness the competitive spirit that compels them to make everything into a contest, we’ve recently moved on to a joint points system, where they compete against each other to do the most good things. It was hugely motivating for the oldest one—this week. But like everything else with parenting, this week’s excellent strategy is next week’s failed campaign, on account of how quickly these little guys grow and change.
Meanwhile, in our current situation, the oldest one has caught on to the fact that there’s an infinite supply of “Mommy”, so he often reserves his best behavior for the high-demand time with Daddy that’s in much lower supply during the work week. I thought by having only boys that I could escape the drama of teenage females—but my preschool son too often reminds me of a 12-year-old girl with his profuse complaining about how boring everything is and how evil I am to place any sort of demands on him. His filter is not yet fully developed in the sense that he’s still learning how to contain the whining no one cares to hear about. During my daily internal monologue, I often think “I don’t WANNA put away the clean dishes or break up another fight about who made it down the stairs first”. But speaking the words won't erase those things from my list of things to do--so I just shut the gauge on my oral filter and keep that shit to myself. To kids my oldest’s age, the perpetuity of life’s little obligations is brand new and they must bemoan the injustice for anyone who’s listening. To his credit, my oldest has already figured out that Daddy has little interest in that kind of conversation—so most of the whining is reserved for Mommy.
For the oldest, at this point, I’m an obstacle, a task master, a Debbie Downer raining on a perpetual parade of great ideas by exposing them as “unsafe” or “unwise”. Like when I dare to limit his IPad time so that his head doesn’t one day dangle permanently at sternum level from an unnaturally curved neck, like a bowling ball hanging from the end of a shepherd’s staff. Or when I prevent him from changing the rules in Old Maid to suit his own hand. Or when I warn him not to be surprised when little brother bites the shit out of him for taunting too much. Or when his new miniature container of bubbles rolls irretrievably under the driver’s seat because he refused to put it away as he was repeatedly told. When things don’t go his way, Mommy is almost always at fault—even if weather patterns or gravity are more obviously to blame.
But ultimately, I’m proud of his fight and fury. Even if it means butting heads multiple times a day now, I know that he’ll be served well as an adult by a strong personality and his frustrating impulse to lobby incessantly for what he wants. He’s both cautious and brave--tentative about the monkey bars, but more courageous in social situations than I ever was. He’s both serious and silly—extolling the highlights of his IPad basketball game as if the outcome were an issue of life and death, but then randomly inserting the word “butt” into theme songs and catch phrases from his favorite cartoons, turning “Paw Patrol”-- a show about puppies in emergency vehicles--into “Butt Patrol”, making Mommy audibly laugh at the mental image of what would be a drastically different show. And he’s smart. So very smart. So interested in numbers, rhyme, and telling time. And so very eager to be out in the world—which scares the shit out of me. But I love that he loves other kids and is already actively seeking those meaningful relationships that will enrich and inform his life experiences. And I’m ultimately proud of his growing independence, however inconvenient it can sometimes be for my rigid mom-mind to accommodate.
My oldest did not attempt to crawl until he was 11 months old, but since then our house and deck have been a maze of baby gates and safety locks. He is 5 today, which brings the mean age of our 2 kids to a staggering 4 years old. Over the past 12 months, the gates and locks have gradually come down, leaving faint marks in the paint on the door jams they used to inhabit. The kids are allowed to roam free in the fenced-in backyard and I supervise from the front door as the oldest scurries across the street unaccompanied to knock on the neighbor’s door when it’s time to play. He runs ahead of me on walks in the woods with no account for staying on the trail or avoiding poison ivy. And he generally prefers that I hang back around other kids, saying, “Don’t listen, Mommy!” when he happens to catch me looking his direction while he’s telling a joke or story that wasn’t meant for me.
And I get it. This is how it goes. But then again, there are those moments. Like when he took my hand at his preschool Mother’s Day celebration and led me like a gentleman to the doll-sized chair at the shrunken table, where he then served me lemonade and muffins with the proudest smile on his face. Or when he claimed his eyes were “watering” in response to the bullying scene in Zootopia, but later whispered to me that it made him sad. Or the day he spilled his brother’s bubbles all over the deck and cried for 15 minutes while I held him like a baby. It had been a long time since he’d been still enough long enough for me to hold him that way and after a while, I began to think that maybe he wasn’t just crying about the bubbles--but about all those little frustrations and disappointments that build up in a little heart until the desire to hide them from mom is finally consumed by the need to process them and move on. Maybe it was just about the bubbles--maybe not. He didn’t really elaborate. But he was exceedingly agreeable for at least an hour after it was all over, even presenting me with a dandelion plucked from the grass in front of the post office--before the spell was finally broken at the grocery store, where he can rarely resist showing his ass from the parking lot to the checkout counter.
I may get the worst of him sometimes, but ultimately, he’s a good boy and I know it. And not in the way that the moms of serial killers convince themselves of it, while rocking back and forth in frazzled denial. He really is a good boy.
Once upon I time, I rocked this boy to sleep every night, but these days at bedtime, I sit on the edge of the bed while he talks to me. It used to be that I’d ask him to tell me 3 things about his day—but “3 things” eventually became “4 things” because it seemed only natural to him upon turning 4 that the number of events he discussed should match his age in years. Naturally. But since “4 things” could sometimes go on until WAY past his bedtime hour, the deal became “4 minutes”, during which he could talk about whatever he wanted until time finally ran out.
Tonight, in the spirit of progress, his “4 minutes” of bedtime monologue will become “5 minutes” to match his new age in years. “When I’m 17, do I get seventeen minutes?” he often asks, to which I respond that if he still wants to talk to me for 17 consecutive minutes on any particular day at that age, I will count myself lucky. And in the meantime, I’m still lucky, because the blessings in him always have a way of showing up right on time—like being born exactly on his due date, sleeping through the night exactly one month later—and knowing just when to melt mommy’s heart with his most genuine of smiles. In the years to come, I cross my fingers and hope my efforts will somehow be “right on time” for him—promoting his independence when I can and supporting him when he needs it—whatever I can do (or refrain from doing) to help bring to fruition the little prayer I used to say over him back in those rock-to-sleep days: that he’ll grow up strong, happy, healthy, and kind and live a long, happy life where he does lots of good things for himself, for the world, and for the people who love him.
Amen.
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