Category: Parents

I confess my mistakes not to flagellate myself, but to reflect and think on ways to make new mistakes tomorrow. Cheers! To new mistakes!

The two mistakes I made are similar in nature. They both were made with good intentions.

#1 My daughter was enjoying something…so I thought she’d enjoy something else

Oh look, a happy baby. She’s lying on her back looking at the shower curtain. I put her on the bathmat while I was showering and she was having a grand time looking at the monkey motif on our curtain. I smiled at her. I chatted with her. I lapped up her grins. And then I made the mistake of thinking, “But wouldn’t she be sooo much happier in her jungle (read: activity mat thingy)?” Let’s put her there! La la la. Good intentions, good intentions. Move her & bam!- not so happy anymore. Why would I mess with something that wasn’t broken? Because a shower curtain isn’t as cool or “stimulating” as a stuffed toucan hanging down in front of your face? Oh, Katie. Leave well enough alone. That’s why it’s called “well enough,” because it is, in fact, enough.

#2 I knew my daughter was sleepy, but since she was alert and chatty, I decided to show off her charm to other people

Wha? She wasn’t acting sleepy, so I went against that little voice in my head that was warning me of her impending implosion and decided to demonstrate her effervescence and wonderfulness to some other grown-ups. Of course you should sit on my lap and look out at the world! Of course I should move you around a lot to show off your best sides! Of course I should be surprised when it backfires! What do you mean I should hide your face away and cuddle and rock you? How will everyone know how cute you are?! Oh right, no one thinks you’re cute when you’re yelling and turning so red. Remember that, Katie. Besides, look how sweet she is when she’s sleeping too!

So I meddled in both instances to try and either “improve” a situation or gloat over the wonders of my kid. I guess I should remember to sit on my hands sometimes and meddle for good at other times.

I’ll work on doing something new and goofier tomorrow.

What responsibilities does my daughter have? She’s a baby, so many people would say none. But without my imposing any on her, I think she may have a few already. She is the one inside of her body and only she has the power to tell me if something is wrong or look at something that interests her or even get herself to sleep.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty of things to do in order to help her with these jobs that she’s got, but inevitably, I can’t do them for her. I can’t magically make things better or reason her out of crying. And I can’t make her eat, sleep or poop. I can only take care of my end of things.

Monday morning: nap time. She awoke too early and I, being the steward of sleep (that is, the caretaker of it), knew this. But I decided to ignore the sensible voice in my head and get her up anyway to see if she was hungry. I don’t want to say that the rest of the day was lousy because of my mistake, but it certainly didn’t help it. Of course it is her job to sleep when she’s tired, but if I don’t allow her the opportunity to sleep, then what kind of steward am I being? I wasn’t taking the best care of her sleep. 

It’s difficult to remember that I can’t control everything regarding her habits. She still seems so malleable. But the quicker I come to realize that I am only the guardian of her and not the owner, the more satisfied and capable both of us will be.

I can’t force, only shape. I can steer a little, but I can’t make her do things. Remember remember remember… I’m just a steward- here to oversee, but not here to own her.

According to CNN, there are approximately 2,850 athletes competing in the Olympic Winter Games. There are 98 events, meaning that there are 294 medals available to win. Many athletes compete for more than one medal, in different distances or team and individual events. But even if more than one medal is available, the chance of winning one is relatively low for so many athletes.

Ok, great. What does this have to do with parenting, Katie? Not everyone is obsessed with the Olympics like you are.

Fair enough. (Because I am pretty obsessed)

I think it can be said that Olympic athletes are some of the best prepared people in their respective sports. They train exhaustively, sacrifice a lot and often have intense focus on their sport and their goals. Even with all of this work, they still aren’t guaranteed gold and accolades or even the opportunity to attend the Olympics if they fail to qualify. They work incredibly hard for, sometimes, no tangible return.

There’s a lot of competition in our world. Soccer games, having the highest GPA, getting into the best school or college, winning the Curling championship. Unless your kids are very lucky and hard-working and motivated (and even if they are these things all the time), they are going to lose at things. You try beating your older brother in a race you didn’t know was on until he yelled, “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Bah!

I guess the thing that makes Olympic athletes able to succeed is their ability to get up and try again even after they lose. Again and again and again. Losing is something we have to learn to deal with much more so than winning. Winning doesn’t teach you any lessons; it just gets you a celebratory pizza.

And while resilience and gumption are both stellar lessons to learn from all the losing our kids will do, there might be an even bigger lesson to learn…how to be happy without winning. Learning to being contended when you don’t have the best of something or can’t get everything you want or are disappointed when you fall short of your goals is a super, duper tricky thing to do. But since this is where 99% of the world population lives, there’s something to be said for starting early. So, can you be satisfied with coming in 4th? Or losing altogether? Or not getting into the college that you had your heart set on? Or making an adjustment to your goals based on…reality?

Like so many Olympic athletes, we learn to say, “I’m just so honored to be here.”

 

While visiting some friends this weekend, I was asked whether my whole life had been turned upside down since the arrival of our daughter 3 months ago. Certainly many things have changed, but I realized my answer just as they were asking.

Life has slowed down a bit, but my life was already slow and relatively quiet. Not many of my daily activities have changed dramatically. I wasn’t working full time prior to her arrival and I had been spending time with kids in homes for the last couple of years. I am used to tracking the sleeping and eating habits of a baby. And most importantly, I don’t have a plan to speed my life up again now that she’s a little older. While I haven’t been specifically preparing for a child for the last 3 years, I think that my routines have helped me get ready for the mundanity that parenting can be. So I already knew what a slow, quiet, daily life looked and felt like. Lucky me.

But what about all of the fast-moving, powerful, ambitious people in our country who become parents? Their experiences must be like walking quickly on a people-mover at the airport and then down-shifting suddenly when they are thrust off of it. For the first few seconds, it feels disorienting and if you’re not careful, you might fall over. Just imagine if most of your life was spent hurrying along and then <wham>, a kid comes along. Now you have to be satisfied with not leaving the house for a while or venturing out for only a short time.

While the advent of a new person with new demands and so much helplessness can be stressful in itself, being very unused to the daily monotony of early parenting can cause its own unwelcome stress. Feeling alone and trapped with unrealized expectations can make the first few months seem never-ending. So I have a couple of tips from this lazy mama to help you cope with quiet and solitude.

#1 Find a radio station that you like

Keep some type of news or music on during the day. This can keep you abreast of what’s going on in the world and keep you company as well.

#2 Practice being bored

What happens when you can’t move or do things? Does your head explode? Practice being bored before you find yourself with a sleeping kid on you and no way to reach the remote. Sit quietly and think. Look at your child’s face. Smile to yourself. Sigh. If your body is still, can your mind be still too?

#3 Have a day (at least one) where you DON’T GET ANYTHING DONE

You’ll have more of these than you’d care to think about once there is a little one in the house. Stay in your pajamas all day. Watch endless hours of TV. Don’t cook dinner. Have cereal. Take a nap. If someone asks you to go for a walk, tell them you can’t. Have nothing to say when your friend calls and asks what you’ve been doing that day. The real challenge for this one is trying not to feel guilty about not doing anything. Mama said there’d be days like this. But here’s a news flash: You’re not worthless if you didn’t “use your time wisely” to reorganize your sock drawer or clean under the bed.

Just as our worth is not determined by the price of our clothes, it is also not determined by our completed check-lists.

Having realistic expectations about the structure of your new everydays will only help you feel more steady when you come to the end of that people-mover and find yourself at home with an infant.

“So, are you all ready for this baby?”

How many times did I hear this as my due date drew nearer?

I was asked about all of the necessary supplies that having a kid entails. Do you have a crib yet? What carseat have you decided on? What’s the theme for your nursery? What baby carrier do you prefer? The Ergo or the Moby? (For the record, I have neither)

I was asked whether I’d be breastfeeding or not. I was asked if I’d be working. I was asked if I would be subscribing to any particular parenting philosophy. These all sound like questions that are aimed at ascertaining my preparedness for parenting, yes? I think maybe…no.

The philosophies and the stuff and the politics of parenting can be important at times, but what takes up my daily parenting agenda has nothing to do with them. While I think that there is a limit to how much one can prepare for this role, I think that our “normal” preparations can actually leave us quite unprepared. And they may even make matters worse by making us think that we somehow are prepared when we have neglected the more important task of preparing ourselves.

The silly email forward that I received that asked Are you ready to have kids? After you read this, maybe not goes through a number of interrupted and perverse examples of how frustrating parenting can be. And while there is much to roll our eyes at on this list (putting a live octopus into a bag?), it might be more helpful than a registry list in getting our minds around the idea of parenthood.

So without being too glib, I’m going to compile a short list of helpful and perhaps stressful points of preparation:

#1 HOLD A CRYING BABY

Even if you have hung out with your friends’ kids or nieces and nephews, everyone knows that when a kid starts to cry, you hand them back to their parents. Yes? Yes. But if you are planning on becoming a parent, you had just better hold on to them and see what happens when you can’t give them away. Some parents have never even held a child before they have one of their own. Amazing that that’s not part of any birthing class.

#2 PRACTICE BEING CALM IN STRESSFUL SITUATIONS

If you are preparing to be a parent, then it’s going to be imperative that you keep your cool (refer to point #1). Since we can’t reason with babies or bribe them into being quiet, we have to get used to the fact that they will be upset and we will have to do our best to help them…WHILE NOT ALSO BECOMING UPSET.

Practice patience in line at the post office even when you’re running late. Think about breathing deeply when the person next to you on the bus is arguing loudly on their phone. And just think, you don’t live in either the post office or on the bus, so these stressful situations will eventually end. Sometimes they will in parenting too, but sometimes they’ll last longer than your commute to work on that dang bus.

#3 KEEP YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF YOUR TOP PRIORITY

What does that mean Katie? It’s the same as the old adage about taking care of yourself while you’re taking care of your kid. But I don’t just mean finding time to take a shower. I also mean finding time to reflect on what’s working FOR YOU. I think a lot about what might help my daughter’s days go smoothly. I want her to be as calm as she can be because she seems to enjoy that more- but more importantly, I ENJOY IT MORE. I’m the one who has to be sane. She can lose her head several times a day. If I wasn’t taking care of my mental state and looking out for ways to make my days more enjoyable, I’d be joining her in a chorus of wailing.

Just like when we fly, the flight attendant stops by our row to make sure that, if we need them, we put our own oxygen masks on before putting them on our kids. Take their advice in life as well and put on your own oxygen mask first.

So while I do generally think that it’s very difficult to prepare for this weird task of parenting, I also think that there are ways to do it that I have only noticed in retrospect.

Luckily I have held a crying baby and I’ve always been good at being a little bit selfish.