I just figured out a new key to parenting happiness. Like all of them, it doesn't last forever, but man when it works, it works.
Yesterday, 10 blocks from home, Mae melted down, as 2 year olds do. Penny did not melt down, but she also didn't vacate the stroller, so that I could cram Mae into it and get home asap. I tried to coax Mae home, and she RAN the other direction, straight toward NYC traffic. I had to chase her down. That made me pretty mad. By the time we got home, I was carrying Mae under one arm, trying to push an umbrella stroller containing a 40 lb kid, one-handedly (which is almost impossible even when it contains nothing but a stuffed animal), and Mae was screaming "PUT ME DOWN" and strangers were looking at me like I was a kidnapper. So, on the scale of parenting happiness, I was pretty much at a negative 100.
We got home, the girls decided to go potty together (Mae has a little practice potty in the bathroom). I was honestly relieved just to get a moment to compose myself alone. I was still really mad. After a few minutes, I heard Mae yell, "Mommy I made poopies!" So I got up with a grumpy moan to go clean the poop out of her potty.
I walked into the bathroom and Penny was up to her elbows in a soapy sink, CLEANING MABEL'S POOPY POTTY. I stood there stunned for a minute. Penny said, "It's ok mommy, I flushed Mae's poop and now I'm cleaning her potty." I said "why?" She said, "Because it makes less work for you." And then my heart basically exploded with love.
Penny has often been a difficult child. She's sensitive and stubborn, has been since birth. Until Mae turned 2, Penny was always the one I expected trouble from. But this last incident. Man, it changed me. It changed my view of her. It changed our entire relationship. And it's lasting. I am living off that one moment, her with soap up to her elbows, cleaning up her sister's poop, making an effort to help out. I don't know when this one will wear off, but it's pretty powerful.
And that's how you make parenting work. You save those little moments that make your heart explode. They don't happen every day, but they don't need to. You save them in your visceral memory and bring them back and live them again. Over and over. They're so powerful, so simple, and the next time you feel like snapping, you can dip back into one of them and buy yourself a little bit of generosity, understanding, and patience. It so easy to forget (and so hard to teach) that we, as a family, are all in this together. When a 5-year old reminds you of it, and shows you that she learned it, that's like gold.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Use Your Phone to Better Ignore Your Kids!
This pair of articles pretty much sums up what annoys me the most about parenting advice. First, this article: Parents on Smartphones Ignore Their Kids, Study Finds. It's all full of pearl-clutching concern about the downfall of the modern family because parents pay attention to their phones instead of their kids. Then this one, far away on another website, but posted only 9 DAYS LATER: The Overprotected Kid, with a url including the phrase "hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone."Because according to this article, citing a whole different group of doctors, we're suffocating our kids and need to ignore them more often.
So here's my solution - let's all stare at our phones more in order to allow our kids to go get dirty!! Whadayasay parenting advice industry??
In fact, I've never been all that upset about parents looking at their phones around their kids. I'm sure that automatically disqualifies me from the parenting advice club forevermore, but what did parents do before smartphones? Or take it even further, before televisions, telephones, before any kind of electronic distraction? I'll tell you what a lot of moms did - they did needlepoint. And they darned socks. And they knitted things. They sat in a chair and distracted themselves from the care of their children, by staring at something in their lap.
And oh, how we long for those bygone days, when mothers would sit in their rocking chairs, sewing away, while their children roamed free. But heaven forbid that mother in the rocking chair is reading a New York Times article on her phone. Or keeping up with work emails. Or just reading someone's blog post in order to feel a little less isolated from the world of grownups. Those things are BAD PARENTING.
Read stuff on your phones if you want to. Or read a book you love. Your kids will play imaginative games by themselves once they realize you're not an eternally-available playmate.
But here's the thing that I keep noticing. Whenever women ignore their children in order to do something appropriately domestic, it's a heartwarming reminder of the good old days. If you ignore your kids to wash the dishes, everybody's cool with it. When you ignore your children to, for instance, answer a work email from your phone, or READ something, that's destroying the family. It's selfish and wrong. But the kid is getting the same amount of attention either way.
Somebody might argue that washing the dishes is modeling good grownup behavior and is therefore instructive. But since when is washing dishes (or floors, or cooking things) the best model of adult life? When a kid asks to play when we're cooking, we say "Mommy is cooking right now, I'll play with you later." That's modeling a good adult activity. Why can't we say "Mommy has to do a little work right now, and then I'll play." Or, "Mommy needs just a few minutes of quiet time to read, and then I'll play." What's the difference? It's all modeling appropriate adult behavior. Doing work electronically from home. Taking a few minutes for a mental health break. These are things that will serve our kids well some day. We're the only ones who can teach that. If we only prioritize domestic activities over kid-time, we tell our kids that domestic activities are the most important thing we can do. If we prioritize work, or self-care, well, maybe they will too. And they'll realize that being a domestic goddess is not the pinnacle of womanhood.
Modern motherhood is full of all kinds of double standards. The phone guilt is one of them. Next time you feel like a bad mom for checking your phone, imagine it's a pretty little needlepoint project, and then decide whether it's really all that bad.
So here's my solution - let's all stare at our phones more in order to allow our kids to go get dirty!! Whadayasay parenting advice industry??
In fact, I've never been all that upset about parents looking at their phones around their kids. I'm sure that automatically disqualifies me from the parenting advice club forevermore, but what did parents do before smartphones? Or take it even further, before televisions, telephones, before any kind of electronic distraction? I'll tell you what a lot of moms did - they did needlepoint. And they darned socks. And they knitted things. They sat in a chair and distracted themselves from the care of their children, by staring at something in their lap.
And oh, how we long for those bygone days, when mothers would sit in their rocking chairs, sewing away, while their children roamed free. But heaven forbid that mother in the rocking chair is reading a New York Times article on her phone. Or keeping up with work emails. Or just reading someone's blog post in order to feel a little less isolated from the world of grownups. Those things are BAD PARENTING.
Read stuff on your phones if you want to. Or read a book you love. Your kids will play imaginative games by themselves once they realize you're not an eternally-available playmate.
But here's the thing that I keep noticing. Whenever women ignore their children in order to do something appropriately domestic, it's a heartwarming reminder of the good old days. If you ignore your kids to wash the dishes, everybody's cool with it. When you ignore your children to, for instance, answer a work email from your phone, or READ something, that's destroying the family. It's selfish and wrong. But the kid is getting the same amount of attention either way.
Somebody might argue that washing the dishes is modeling good grownup behavior and is therefore instructive. But since when is washing dishes (or floors, or cooking things) the best model of adult life? When a kid asks to play when we're cooking, we say "Mommy is cooking right now, I'll play with you later." That's modeling a good adult activity. Why can't we say "Mommy has to do a little work right now, and then I'll play." Or, "Mommy needs just a few minutes of quiet time to read, and then I'll play." What's the difference? It's all modeling appropriate adult behavior. Doing work electronically from home. Taking a few minutes for a mental health break. These are things that will serve our kids well some day. We're the only ones who can teach that. If we only prioritize domestic activities over kid-time, we tell our kids that domestic activities are the most important thing we can do. If we prioritize work, or self-care, well, maybe they will too. And they'll realize that being a domestic goddess is not the pinnacle of womanhood.
Modern motherhood is full of all kinds of double standards. The phone guilt is one of them. Next time you feel like a bad mom for checking your phone, imagine it's a pretty little needlepoint project, and then decide whether it's really all that bad.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)