Article from the New York Times about how hurtful it can be to kids when we pay attention to screens instead of our offspring.
I used to have a “no computer or phone while he’s awake” rule with Peanut, but had been easing that lately so I can check email while he’s in the yard or the small one is happily talking to his mobile. Guess I’ll go back to the daytime blackout, which is great news for my need for adult interaction and freelance work.
Sigh.
I’m having a tough time accepting a lot about my life—that the novel is still not published, that my PhD is still a distant dream, that two totally awesome and timely journal articles are languishing at 95% complete and not yet submitted, that Spouse and I are destined to be poor…
And that my eldest is testing out being the school’s resident a–hole.
This troubled me for several weeks, hearing about the times he had to be separated from his partner in crime, stifling my horror as he tells me of his antics, wondering if I wasted my time being so carefully respectful and gentle and loving and patient. If he’s going to throw sand in the face of the sweet and shy one at school, why did I try so hard to do everything thoughtfully, mindfully, and (what I now consider) self-effacingly? Why not actually lock the door when I pee, or shower regularly, or say no to playing with him, or negotiate a little less if he’s going to be antisocial and embarrassing?
And I asked another parent at school, tearfully, “is my kid an a–hole?”
He said something I really appreciated: “No, he’s usually sweet and he’s doing some awful stuff. But that’s his job. Now, my kid’s an a–hole.”
Not true. But I realized we all see things in our children we don’t like, that the socialized side of us wants to just beat right out of them, and the kid side of us wants to run from. The preschool dad who talked to me has a child with some unsavory characteristics sometimes, who is not an a–hole. My kid is trying out some awful behaviors to get attention and see the responses, but he’s not an a–hole. What he is, is different than me and separate from me. We’re now walking that thin line where it’s my job to teach him what’s okay, and it’s his job to choose the okay over the not-okay.
I thought about it, and Super Cool, Sweet, Awesome Lady X at school has a child who is genuinely an a–hole. Sometimes. And another child who is delightful. Mostly. And neither is her fault. And the total a–hole parent at school has a kid who is generally okay. And that’s clearly not due to parenting.
You do what you can and try your best, but some of your child’s behavior has nothing to do with you. (Yes I knew that, but now I have to repeat it more often than “please don’t pick up trash from the street.”) As I try to let Peanut separate and become his own person, I need to stop being embarrassed and realize that he is, in fact, his own person. And he’s four. And if he’s hated that’s his problem and if he’s loved it’s his problem. And all I can do is give him what I can to help get him through. He has to do the rest.
And damned if that isn’t the hardest part so far. Because from this side of the preschool fence, that adorable and feisty and opinionated and persistent and intense child is sometimes miraculously delicious, and sometimes a giant a–hole.
How is the child abuse rate in this country not higher?
(Seriously, no depressing replies from my social worker friends and family or law enforcement readers on how desperately high even a 0.00000001% rate is. I know that. But the question does not value a higher rate. It marvels at the <100% rate.)
Why can I not watch a film, show, or commercial without composing a critical theory response that involves footnotes and dreams of a research grant? What the hell is wrong with me? Am I missing enjoyment centers in my brain or something?
Where is that box of books I labeled to be first on the shelf after the three moves of a year-plus ago? I need two of those books, man. Where are they?
How does, "you may cut paper and only paper" translate into "try to cut your shirt, the rug, your chin, a bracelet, and the baby toys while I’m right here watching“? Seriously. Taking the whole ‘looking for negative attention’ thing to a whole new level.
No wonder I’m pissed I have absolutely no time to write…the voices in my head are better companions than small children. Why does nobody say how completely not ideal the companionship of young children is?
(repost, as in “to post again,” not as in “offensive follow-up to a parry,” of musings from February 2009)
First Law: net inertia. Subjects at rest tend to stay at rest until you settle in. Then they spring into action, usually of the death-defying (or at least social-convention-defying) sort. Conversely, subjects in motion will tend to stay in motion until such time as you enjoy their motion. Then they will stop.
Second Law: F=ma. The relationship between the force needed to cajole a small person into even the most pleasant task is Force=(minutes needed to perform task without small children)x(age, in years, you feel after the task is complete). Exempli gratia, force required to put on child’s shoes=(.25)x(57)=14. Units may vary. 14 minutes, 14 different techniques, 14 different pair before they finally agree to leave one on, 14 threats to leave without said child if they don’t put on their flipping shoes NOW…
Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You get dressed, they glitter paint the cat. You prepare breakfast, they remove all the tape flags from your research books. You strike up a conversation with the clerk at the market, they strip down naked and run away laughing.
You don’t see how those are equal and opposite? You must possess logic and reason, then. Ah. You must not have children.
Seriously, a robot could do this job.
I will soon be replaced by an old school tape recorder…each morning press the button and hear:
Good morning sweet thing…Peanut, honey, that voice is a little loud for so early. Can you please…honey, please be gentle with the cat. Peanut, furniture is not for banging…Please brush your teeth. Please put down the seat.
Please eat your breakfast. Honey, that’s what you asked me to make, so eat it or make your own breakfast. Babe, please keep the food on your plate not in your hair. Please face your food. Please put your legs under the table and face your food. If you’re done, get down. Peanut, playing with your food means you’re done, so please get down…Okay, then eat…Fine. Get down….Then EAT!
Please get your clothes. You’re right…don’t get your clothes. I’m faster at getting clothes so I’ll just go get them for you…what? You’ll do it? No way. Please don’t dress yourself or I’ll get so, so, so angry. Oh, dear, no…. Love, you need a jacket. Fine, don’t wear it, but choose one just in case.
Sweetie, whistles and megaphones are outside toys. So are bicycles. So is that fishing pole and hockey stick. Would you like help choosing an inside toy? Please come outside if you’re going to throw the ball; in the house we roll balls. We roll balls inside, P. Peanut! Roll the ball or go outside, those are your choices.
P, jumping off the couch is okay, but jumping off the cat tree is not. Sweetness, please listen to me: that is not safe. If you jump off the cat tree you will get hurt. I’m not going to say it again…I’m sorry you got hurt, but I told you not to do that. Mommies know what can hurt you. We make rules to keep you safe not to irritate you. Yes, I know rules are irritating. So is enforcing rules.
Please eat your food. Please face your food. Please stop that. Please help me. Please listen. Please wash your hands. Please put that away. Please stop yelling. Please answer me. Please listen. Please answer me. Please listen. Please answer me. Please eat your food. Please face your food. Please make better choices. Please…ppppppplllllllzlzzzzz rhskf kdmnewik sdofnm rrr rojmksdfnk r r r …
Even the damned tape recorder broke doing that shit every day.
already in progress:
…and you’d better call the insurance bastards to see if it’s covered.
As for you, Peanut, you are a very interesting introduction to the fine, fine phase that is Four Years Old. Nothing could be worse than Three, it is true. But if Three was all Mr. Hyde and no Jekyl, Four is the maddening experience of discerning what dropped hat sends you from Jekyl to Hyde and back. No, I will not pick up the toy you kicked across the room. You threw one, I took it away. You threw another, I took it away. Most of your collection is on top of the bookcase today, waiting to see which version of you comes out of your room tomorrow morning. So when you kick a toy out of anger, you get to pick it up yourself. No, you do it. Cry all you want; I no longer flip out when you’re in distress. A newborn has made me immune to your terrorist tactics. Butter is the antidote to my occasional Peanut allergy.
Butter, you’d better stop it. Seriously. Knock it off. I followed all your nonverbal cues, I did everything you wanted, and I got you to sleep. Just because I moved the slightest bit does not mean you can flutter your eyes open and start flirting with me. Yes, you’re cute. Yes, you’re still tiny enough that everything you do is precious. Your loud sleeping is delightful, your recent partial baldness is adorable, and your waste products are coo-inspiring. But go to freaking sleep, you little monkey!
And quit suggesting that you want to nurse just so you can gather huge mouthfuls of milk and the spit them on me. That’s not funny, despite what your brother says.
Hey, agents who have my novel and haven’t replied in well past the 6 weeks you promised: screw you! What is wrong with you? All the other rejections came within the appropriate timeframe. It’s rude to set a deadline and miss it without notifying involved parties that you need longer to complete the task. I don’t want your representation, anyway. This thing is gonna be huge, and so will the next dozen or so I write, and you’ll rue the day. You’ll weep, you’ll rend your garments and pull out your hair. You’ll want a time machine to take you back to when you first heard my name just so you can jump at the chance to take on all my current and future brilliance. You will self-flagellate, and you will be correct in so torturing yourselves.
Asshats.
Sure, Peanut, we can go to the playground. Sure you can climb that big ol’ thing you’re always scared of. Sure I can help you down. Just turn around and…no, I can’t climb up there with you. I can’t help you from up there. I can help you from down here. No, I can’t take baby home and come back without the sling. Even if I did, I’d still be short and unable to lift 35 pounds down from well above my head. I will stand here and talk to you gently for 30 freaking minutes, convincing you that I will help and you won’t fall and you can do it. And after that interminable period of patience and goodness and model mothering, during which I have to take two time outs to keep from beating you and one to nurse your brother, I will grab you by the ankles and pull you off the play structure. Yes, you technically fell. I mostly, kind of caught you, though. It was a slow fall. Are you hurt? No? Good. Come on. Time to go make you the dinner you request and then refuse to eat.
things I deeply appreciate this week:
babies who laugh in their sleep
babies who sometimes *do* sleep
people who cook me food
people who wash my dishes
people who do my laundry
Netflix
peri bottles
central heating
indoor plumbing
rocking chairs
helpful four-year-olds
kellymom.com
sunshine
ibuprofen
experience
fresh sheets
understanding clients
co-sleepers
thoughtful friends
intense four-year-olds who are trying their best
rechargeable toy batteries
Moses baskets
things I could really do without right now:
grouchy people
people who snap at me
nighttime flop sweats
The Part About The Crimes
advice to let a two-week old cry instead of “over” nursing
intense four-year olds who need to test limits
leaf blowers
We’ve discussed before that Peanut Cacahuete Naptime wants to be a variety of things when he gets bigger. Letter carrier, worker, cheese maker, architect, nurse, helicopter pilot, fire fighter, homeless person.
I’ve started a list for Hazelnut, which he can ignore when he is older, of potential future careers based on his strengths now:
Professional Rodeo Nurser
Supreme Court Gallery Disrupter
Museum of Modern Art Starer
Long-haul Trucking Sleep Avoider
Medical Resident or Intern (or other unsleeper)
Porcine Interpreter or French Truffle Snuffler
Nude Interpretive Dancer (oh, please, don’t tell your mother about that one, H.N.N.)
The only field for which he seems ill-suited is navigation.
B: Hey, MOM! Come quick! There’s a nipple over here!
M: Um, Baby, it’s right here in front of your mouth.
B: NOOOOOO! It’s South of here! Let’s go! Get out of my way!
M: Hazelnut, it’s right here. Let me…
B: Stop touching my head! You’re keeping me from the nipple down there, somewhere way, way down there…Let’s go!
M: Buddy, the nipple is right here. Move your hands.
B: STOP!! You’re making everything too hard, Mom! You’re ruining everything! I know a nipple when I root endlessly in the pillow for one. See? This milk soaked cloth that’s now saturated because I won’t latch? This is it! I found the nipple!
M: Wow. you’re strong for a small person. But believe me, Babe, it’s right here.
B: Oh, thank goodness I got it. Right here in front of me. Right where I was telling you. Excuse me while I consume enough for three babies in the next four minutes.
If that ain’t rodeo, I don’t know what is.
Peanut, on witnessing his baby brother’s first bath:
“My penis is bigger.”
Grandma, on the phone while trying to parent a Wild Peanut:
“P, grapes are not for soccer.”
Me, to Spouse, after peering into the fish tank before bathtime:
“Would it be wrong to “notice” the dead fish tomorrow morning so we can get P to bed on time tonight?”
Spouse, each time I burst into tears:
“What time was your last pain pill?”
Stranger, before I smothered them to death with milk-soaked breast pads and soggy bra:
“How is he sleeping?”
Peanut, as he kisses his sleeping brother on the head:
“When you get bigger, you can play with me if you want to. Only if you want to.”
Which is harder: parenting one or two? In the first week home, two is harder. But I can, honestly see that will change.
Which is harder: labor or parenting? Hands down, parenting is harder. Labor is on my terms, in my head, and following my rhythms. Parenting is a clusterf*&# on someone else’s schedule, hostage to their demands, and in the service of exactly the opposite of what I want and am good at. Plus, labor was 47 hours. Parenting is 47 years.
Which was rougher: C-section or VBAC? The surgery. Scary and debilitating. Healing is a toss up, only because of the 5 hours of pushing a 14 1/2 inch head wedged under a pubic bone and resulting vacuum. But surgery much less my cup of tea than the VBAC, even with aforementioned 47-hour protracted vacation from parenting.
Which wears on you more: sleep deprivation or four-year old tantrums? The former went on for three years with Peanut, so tired is old news. The tantrums are legendary—nay, cataclysmic—and much more draining.
Who’s cuter? Gasp. How could you ask that? Of COURSE the one who is not screaming at any given moment is the cutest.
Which came first, chicken or egg? Egg, clearly. Some not-quite-chicken lays slightly mutated egg that gives rise to actual chicken. Yes, mama was necessary, but egg was first at being chicken.
When will you posts be interesting again? Not any time soon, sad to say.
“Mommy? If you attached our car to Daddy’s truck and attached Daddy’s truck to our house and attached our house to grandma’s house and attached grandma’s house to Jupiter and attached Jupiter to Saturn and attached Saturn to the sun…I love you bigger than that.”
Damn. That’s a lot of love, boy.
I’ll wait until you’re bigger to tell you I love you infinity plus one.
Also, the Sun so completely dwarfs all those other objects that it’s silly to waste all the breath attaching them when you could shortcut with “I love you bigger than the Sun” and be done with it. But I won’t tell you that, because who doesn’t need that tiny, wee bit of bonus, Jupiter-sized love? Great Atlas-buoyed heavens, I know I do.
I avoid baby stores like the plague, for they are full of my least favorite things: parents.
Babies have excuses for socially unacceptable behavior. Parents? Not so much.
Example from a recent trip, taken under duress and only because there simply isn’t any way to get a few necessary baby items if one goes to a regular store (by few, I mean one; and by necessary I mean newborn head support for Hazelnut’s car seat. The organic cheese puffs were not the reason for the trip, so don’t judge me. Okay, they were a secondary reason, but the baby superawfulstore is closer than a natural food store. And the head support. I’m trying to support my infant’s head, people. And they are grilled cheese puffs, made with natural chemicals and organic empty calories to taste like crunchy grilled cheese.)
Anyway.
Dad and Mom are shopping with one year old child. Mom is carrying her, but hands her to Dad as she investigates all the useless and lame sippy cup technology available at the baby superawfulstore.
Child wants to hold Dad’s glasses. He gives them to her. She shakes them. Then drops or throws them. He says:
“No. Don’t do that. That is being a bad girl. Do not throw Daddy’s glasses. I do not want you to do that. That is being very, very bad. No, I will not hug you. You do not get hugs when you are very bad. Bad girl.” Her lip is out; she’s sad and trying to hug him. He puts his glasses back on and walks away before I hear whether she cries.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, I want to give this man a parenting award. He didn’t hit her for dropping or throwing the glasses, and in so doing, allowed her exactly one chance to express a totally normal scientific impulse: experimentation with gravity. She needed to see what happened to the glasses if they dropped. Sure he withheld love and told her that she was a flawed person for disobeying instructions he thought but never expressed aloud; but he didn’t beat her as most of the parents in the superawfulstore tend to. And that generous restraint is why she will grow up with stupendous self esteem and be willing to stand up for what’s right in the world. Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, this man is a Nobel Peace Prize waiting to happen. He’s preventing future wars and genocide by teaching love, patience, and respect.
And if they don’t give him an award, they are very, very bad and he won’t hug them even if they cry. A guy’s gotta put his foot down, after all, with a parenting award committee that’s totally new to this planet and its rules.
Problem: two terrible evenings in a row where Peanut spends the time from nap until lullabies out of his mind with the urge to scream and cry and physically torment his parents until well after his alleged bedtime.
Solution: bogle petite syrah port. two ounces in wedding crystal.
Problem: guilt over subjecting in utero second child to that particular avoidance technique
Solution: eat an entire sleeve of ginger snaps to go with the port.
Problem: it’s been four months since I’ve had a drink and I’m a lightweight. A very bloated, itchy, kind of grouchy lightweight.
Solution: more ginger snaps.
Me: Peanut, please take off your clothes for bath.
…
M: Pea, it’s bath time. Please take off your clothes.
…
M: Peanut. You’re in the bathroom with your clothes on. What’s the deal? I’m asking you patiently. Please take off your clothes.
P: Mommy? You’re boring.
M: You mean it’s boring to hear the same words over and over.
P: Yup.
M: Well, gotta tell you, bud. It’s boring to say something over and over. Tell you what. You listen the first time, and I won’t have to say it again.
P: That’s still boring.
M: Well, you’ve got me there, buddy. Having rules and being clean and getting naked is boring.
P: No it’s not! Watch! Naked is fun.
Oh, boy, do we have a handful and a half living in our house.
Thankfully, the past few weeks have been quite enjoyable. Sure, we’ve had age-appropriate struggles and nonsense and frustrations, but totally in proportion to what normal children dish out. Nothing like the batshit insane we often endure (barely) here at Chez Nap (see for instance the popular posts that involve my child being a bit off-the-charts in general), or that they have handled for many more moons over at Bad Mommy Moments.
This weekend, when gently instructing Peanut on the reasons we do not jump on the furniture in our house, he told me, “Don’t worry about me, Mommy. Just worry about yourself.” I usually give a gentle but firm lecture about respect and ways that we talk to other people before leaving the room to laugh my ass off, but I didn’t make it. I burst out giggling, and then called Spouse over for a conference. I had heard those words before. Directly out of my alleged partner’s mouth. So that Peanut announcement, though saucy, was not entirely his fault.
Today, though, while we were climbing at best of the neighborhood’s awesome rock parks, he told me, “Look, Mom, I’m almost four and that’s older than you, so just climb your rock and let me do my day.”
Um….so torn…want you to grow up. Dig the independence. Absolutely groove on you pushing back. But dude? That rock is several stories high, and covered in moss and rain. Also? I’d leave you here in a heartbeat after a comment like that if I hadn’t already invested quite a bit of care and hypervigilance and patience and reason and what was left of my sanity over the past few years. If you didn’t have so damned much Mama Equity in you, you’d be on your own.
So instead I played along. “Well, yes, almost-four is older than almost-forty, so you’d better go to college and get a job and find an affordable house and get a mortgage and pay your way, because otherwise, I’m gonna be the boss for a few more years.”
His answer? Predictably: “Just worry about yourself, Mom. Don’t worry about me.” Would that such a thing were possible, dude. Before we left for the rock park, I was thinking “four down, twenty to go.” But we all know I won’t stop worrying (or butting in) after another 20 years. Sweat equity, patience capital, and sanity stakeholding and all.
NaptimeWriting 