Usually, however, DB is the champion bedtime postponer.  He can’t settle down because the blanket is in the wrong place, he needs more water, he wants company, or his arm hurts.  He begs me to sing the goodnight song THREE times, because he “forgot to sing along” the first two times.  We have so many lights on that he could perform surgery, and yet it is still too dark.  Or, “I can’t sleep because my toenails are growing.”

What is our deal?  Why do we resist this thing that is so beneficial?  Studies have shown that lack of sleep contributes to all manner of adverse health effects, not to mention the productivity problems.  I’d look up some of the studies and cite them, but I’m too tired.

In my last post, I wondered about what obvious-to-others thing I’m doing wrong as I raise my son.  I fret a lot about being a bad parent.  I’m a perfectionist anyway about things that are important to me, and flying solo has made me worry even more about making the inevitable billion mistakes.  DB is disadvantaged already by having only one parent, I say to myself, and so I have to be extra good at my job to compensate.  The problem, of course, is that it’s impossible.  I can’t be two parents.  As I continue to not measure up to my ideals, I just make myself more anxious and overwhelmed.  And I turn this great gig – in which I get to spend a lot of time with a smart, personable kid – into drudgery for both of us.

So I’m taking a page from DB’s teachers’ playbook, and making myself a chart.  Every time I make a parenting anti-mistake, I get a sticker.  (Clearly this notion is overdue, if I don’t even know what to CALL it when I do something right.)  When I fill the chart, I get to pick out a treat.  The point of the chart isn’t to encourage good behavior, as it was for DB’s rhymes-with-hottie chart, but rather to notice the times I get it right as a parent.  In spite of what I seem to be fond of saying about myself, I could be worse at this job.  Sometimes I set reasonable limits and stick to them, even when the resultant whining is really annoying.  Sometimes I remember to pack snacks when we go out for a bike ride.  Sometimes I expect DB to take age-appropriate responsibility for things.  And I don’t stint on the affection.

“I’m patting you,” DB said to me, thumping me on the shoulder blade.  “I’m patting you because you did a good thing.”

“Oh yes?” I replied.  “What did I do?”

“You gave me a hug and a kiss.  That was a good thing to do.  Hooray for you!”

Hooray for me.

Me (in my head; not quite bold enough to critique someone I’ve just met on her parenting skills):  Well, you’ve obviously taught him that he doesn’t have to.  If there are no consequences for not doing what you say, why should he listen?

Another parent I know runs herself ragged picking up after her teenagers and fixing their mistakes, then wonders why they never seem to grow up and take responsibility for themselves.  Those kids have learned that Mom will always come to the rescue, so they don’t have to develop coping skills.

I don’t know either of these mothers well, yet it is obvious to me that they have brought these particular parenting challenges on themselves.  Perhaps that bystander status is what allows me to see the cause and effect so readily.  A lot of us parents have a blind spot of some kind.  Out of love for our kids we want their lives to be easy, and we want them to be happy.  But we don’t do them any favors if we don’t set firm limits, or if we make the road so smooth for them that they never learn what to do when it gets bumpy.

So I wonder:  what annoying and/or bad-for-his-long-term-development DB-behavior am I unwittingly encouraging?  It should be obvious.

The young woman says, “I think I want a baby.”  Of course she does – babies are easy.  They’re cute, lightweight, and easily portable.  They are not picky eaters.  They do not have to be bribed into at least please making a stab at using the toilet before leaving the house.  No one expects them to be polite.  They will not crash their kid-sized shopping carts into people at the store and have to be instructed to apologize to the crashee.  Pick them up and soothe them when they cry, feed them, change their diapers, and that is enough for tiny babies.

So what if they cry for hours on end, eat every seven minutes, and need their diapers changed 12 or more times a day.  That, alas, is the easy part.  If we’re lucky, they become high-energy, high-functioning small people with distinct personalities and strong opinions.  I am deeply humbled by the amount of effort it has taken to get my child from baby to this point, and he’s only four.  I’ve got 14 increasingly challenging years to go before he even reaches legal majority – and my responsibility will surely not end there.  Look at me:  I’m almost 40 and still, to my chagrin, heavily dependent upon my mother at a point in our lives when she ought to be able to rely on me.  When you say “I want a baby,” you’re signing up – again, if you’re lucky – for a lifelong commitment.

Fortunately the kids become more and more interesting as they age – otherwise lifelong commitment equals unbearable slog.  Babies are cute, but they can’t watch a flock of crows stream across the sky at dusk and exclaim, “Look at that big pile of birds!  That’s amazing!”  They can’t dance for joy when an Amtrak train pulls into the station.  And they don’t clamp their arms around your neck and say, “I love you a lot of times!”  (Also there are pitifully few infant bloggers.  The imperative to “write what you know” is very limiting when your life experience consists of sleeping, drooling, and having your picture taken.)

You can only pray that someday your baby will do all those things.  And then the work won’t seem so much like work.

It was enlightening and encouraging, therefore, to attend a birthday party with DB at which the guest list was heavy on classmates.  While the kids had a ball in the playroom, several of the parents and I camped out in the hall and swapped horror stories.  This boy makes up exceedingly tall tales about how the lamp got broken.  This girl wants to marry each and every boy in her class.  That kid had a really hard time adjusting to the new baby.  This one won’t stay in bed.  Each of us confessed to something we thought was dreadful, only to have at least one other parent chime in with “oh, I’ve done that!!”  We listened to each other and laughed, and, I suspect, thanked our lucky stars to have gained this valuable insight:  none of us actually knows what we’re doing.  We are all muddling through as best we can, reading books and consulting the school social worker and – bottom line – loving our children fiercely.  Hoping not to cause lasting damage.

Surely there are some parents who do know what they are doing.  I guess they were the ones supervising the kids in the playroom while we muddlers lurked and shirked in the hallway.

I would love to see a comic book parody about this Credible Hock guy.  By day, a mild-mannered and scrupulously honest pawnshop owner.  By night, a crusader for justice who fights petty criminals by sneaking up behind them and clearing his throat really hard.  But then he has to go look for a tissue and a trash can, because he can’t spit onto the sidewalk – that would be littering.

What will I do when DB gets older and becomes more worldly?  If I have to rely on my personal creativity alone, I will have nothing funny to write.

Life with a three-year-old is hard.  As a solo parent, I have no one to back me up when I insist that hands should be washed before meals, or that it is in fact bedtime.  Or conversely, no one to step in and send ME for a time-out when I’m making unreasonable demands.  And DB has a lot of brainpower free to figure out how to exploit my weaknesses.  He’s not concerned about laundry or bills or grocery shopping; the banana just magically appears every day at the breakfast table.  His teachers say they are impressed with his language skills, and I wonder if he shouts “Stop TELLING me!” at them the way he does with me.

Tonight at dinner, I watched as he polished off his chicken and broccoli without a shred of fuss.  He did the same at lunch with his mac and cheese and grapes.  I thought back eighteen months or so, when it seemed that he would never ever expand his repertoire beyond graham crackers with peanut butter.  And so I take heart in the idea that one day, logic and reason will be embraced.  He won’t be three years old forever.  I just hope we both live long enough to taste the fruits of four.

This is not a quote from DB.  This is how I feel at the end of those rare occasions when I catch a whiff of what life was like in the years B.C. (before child).

A few weeks ago I visited by myself with a group of college friends.  (Thanks for the babysitting, Mom!)  How remarkable it is to have adult conversations, in which people look you in the eyes when they talk, and wait for you to finish your thought, and never once bring up the subject of garbage trucks.  This weekend a dear old friend came for a visit and claimed that when he wants to go do something, he goes and does it, without even considering whether he has brought along enough Pull-Ups and toy cars.  It’s hard to go back to being the sole proprietor of Mommy & Son Enterprises after tasting those kinds of freedoms.

DOF pointed out, however, that my individual rights were not terminated when DB arrived.  I am allowed to have other interests that my son does not share.  And I could even take a few minutes to myself to pursue them - while DB is in the house – without being branded a bad mother.  Shocking.

But true.  In the healthiest families the children feel loved and cared for, and feel that their needs and wants count for something – but they also know unequivocally that they are Not In Charge.

“I’m pulling up it.”

Leave it to DB to point out the inconsistencies in English sentence structure.  He made a direct substitution of pronoun (“it”) for noun (“my sock”), and he avoided ending a sentence with a preposition, and yet he is incorrect.

Poor kid.  He has assimilated the rules but hasn’t catched on to all the exceptions.

A Flush of Insight:  Local Mom Tours the Arlington Water Pollution [Control] Plant

I’m a sucker for a plant tour. Such a sucker, in fact, that a mild day in March had me suiting up in reflective vest, safety goggles, and a hardhat for an hour-and-a-half tromp around Arlington County’s sewage treatment facility, the Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP). (Also, I am the mother of a potty-training three-year-old boy. This is familiar territory.)  Read more…