Chapter Thirteen: School
Most children seem to like school most of the time. The one thing that’s really bad about a lot of schools today is that parents spend too much time there. Helicoptering and mucking things up. Unless your child is having trouble, is a bully or is being bullied I think you should stay out of the fray. If, for example, you have already been a Class Mom once, sign up for yoga at the Y or bead shoes in your off-hours. Do, however, demand Phonics. Scream and stomp about for Phonics. Start a petition and don’t take no for an answer. While you’re at it, beg for grammar. Once I asked a teacher why she didn’t spend more time teaching grammar. She said because the children found it “boring” to learn and she found it “boring” to teach. Unless you want to spend the rest of your child’s high school career overhearing, “We would have drank more, but the police came.”, lobby for “boring”. Often the following things are also “boring”: working, working two jobs, paying bills, driving carpools, marriage, in-laws, illness, jail, and not being able to work two jobs.
For young children, school playgrounds are mini-life. They don’t know it but you do. It’s a good place to learn about sharing, manners, including rather than excluding, and standing up for yourself and those who don’t yet know how. Tell your child even if he isn’t the biggest guy on the playground he has an obligation to look out for others. He’ll feel big.
Chapter Twelve: Single Parenting, Sports and Things
I was a competitive golfer by the age of seven and a competitive tennis player by the age of nine. I have two daughters whose idea of physical exertion is to walk fast while shopping. The Universe works in strange ways.
My son, however, loves sports and it was with some confidence that I dropped him off at the Little League field for the first time. I was a single mother and working by the time he was three so I was really looking forward to his bonding with the guys, the other six-year olds. All the fathers were there, each playing catch with his own son. All their sons, and not mine, had already had been to baseball camps so it didn’t take long for me to figure out that, yet again, I had permanently ruined my child’s self-esteem. I backed up, parked the car, introduced myself to the coaches and thus began one of the best experiences of my son’s life and my own. Thanks to the head coach, Tom Martin, who became my dear friend because he was so kind, I began to go to all the practices, play catch with my own son and the other boys. I was actually invited into the dugout to help coach. I observed how men and boys communicate. Unlike girls, it is essentially a non-verbal, tactile, always understated and primitive ritual that includes a lot of nodding and grunting, head rubbing and slapping: backs, shoulders and bottoms. The point? You don’t have to be a man to be a good father or a woman to be a good mother.
Chapter Eleven: Being Present
You don’t just wake up one day with a reasonably civilized 15 year old. Years and years of being present are required. In addition to being physically present, I mean mentally and emotionally. If you’re drunk, you’re not there. If you’re always on the cell phone or the computer, you’re not there. If you have ADHD and are in constant motion and distracted, you’re not there. Conversely, you can be at work and still be there. One of the prerequisites for success is that you put your children first. By this, I don’t mean that you should be hypervigilant or that you breed entitlement by constantly giving them things, or always giving in. You must and should have a life of your own. But, in a global sense, let their needs and what is best for them be your first priority. Listen, talk and be engaged in your relationship with them.
I’m a believer in happy and cheerful sacrifice. Not martyrdom, but commitment. To be successful requires constant observation, sometimes from the perimeter, and a certain amount of agility because children grow like mad and their needs change sometimes intra-day. If you’ve ever had a two year old, you know that they like to wander away and then turn around to see if you’re still there. If you are, they feel braver and sometimes walk on a little farther. Lately, I’ve noticed that phenomenon recurring in my teenagers. When my son first got his driver’s license last summer, I sensed he wanted to be the one who left me. And in the beginning, he wanted me to be there when he got home. Not obviously so but there, nonetheless, maybe just reading. That is how it should be. One of the main responsibilities you have to your children is to fulfill your own functional obsolescence. It requires exquisite timing.
Chapter Ten: Routine
Having a baby is disruptive. The sooner you develop a newborn’s schedule for eating and sleeping, the more time you will have for your principal pastime, worrying. My mother told me, among other things, to bathe the baby at 10 a.m., feed her, burp her and put her down for a nice long nap. The added bonus was that it would give her a sense of security to know that certain things happened at the same time each day. I believe that. It sounded like a chaos-limiting move, and then one day I found myself dangling a naked 3 week old over the bathroom sink watching the clock tick 9:57, 9:58, 9:59… I was not a well woman.
Chapter Nine: Bedtime
With infants at bedtime, the less snuggling the better and it’s one of the few times less snuggling, rather than more, is good. When they are several months old, if they cry when you put them down, the rule is to let them- anywhere from 20-45 minutes or until you die. When they are young toddlers, snuggle, read and tuck them in, ever so gently. It’s such a sweet time and sooner than you think you will actively, passionately miss “Goodnight Moon” which you will have once memorized and since forgotten. But not completely. My oldest daughter did not sleep through the night, not once, until the day we brought her baby sister home from the hospital. I never could get past 19 minutes. She was three. I think she had been lonesome. With respect to the issue of whether or not to let your children sleep with you, it’s probably not a good idea to let them start out there. Here are my suggestions: If he falls asleep in your bed, carry him into his own bed. If she wakes up and cries while still sleeping in a crib, and is thus still a prisoner, check to make sure the ceiling did not collapse. ( See “FINIALS” ). Offer a few soothing words without picking her up, leave and make a deal with God that you will never ever ask for anything for yourself as long as you live or be overdrawn, ever again, if She will just let you have that one night of uninterrupted sleep. Swear. However, if he wakes up in the middle of the night having had a nightmare about a huge, hideous African Gaboon viper that entered his bedroom through the Spiderman nightlight socket, scoot over. No matter what your pediatrician or your mother says, if you can resist a 3-year old in feet pajamas who smells like baby lotion, in your bed, snuggled as close as is humanly possible to your cellulite-riddled post-partum body that no one else would touch, you are cold, cruel and sick and don’t deserve children.
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