The Rollercoaster of Parenthood

Anyone who thinks that they can in any way be CLOSE to being the perfect parent…. have a glass of wine, chill out, and FUHGEDDABOUTIT!

As one of the women in the generation that grew up in the ’70s and ’80s (what do they call us? Generation X? The Me Generation? I can’t even remember anymore), we happened into adulthood with many, many pressures, many of which we put on ourselves. First and foremost, we were the first real generation that EXPECTED to have a CAREER outside of the home, for many reasons: We watched some of our female “role models” stay in spoiled marriages because they didn’t have anywhere else to go and couldn’t make a living on their own; we had relatives that lived through the Great Depression, who told us stories of the value of the Almighty Dollar, and that you should always have something in reserve; we grew up just past the liberating ’60s, and women as a whole were realizing that the cultural expectations for women were basically testosterone’s play on “keeping us in place.” As for myself, I grew up on Long Island in a single-parent and mostly female household; it was my mother, my sister, my grandmother and grandfather (poor guy), and my great grandmother (until I was 11). My mother had almost always worked, as had my grandmother (which was an anamoly to her generation). And, since women basically all ran and kept the household going, I grew up knowing nothing else but a female-dominated environment. My father, though VERY old-fashioned and sexist in many ways, felt the sky was the limit for HIS GIRLS (because we were different), which I think was punctuated because we only saw him once a week.

So, out of the gate, I just knew I could DO IT ALL: have a lucrative career, a wonderful equalist husband, and be the PERFECT parent. I wouldn’t have my children see the injustices of the past! I would make sure that they were BROUGHT UP RIGHT! (See my blog “My Parenting and Other Stuff: A Prologue” from 9/25/07.)

Boy, what an idealist I was.

Now you see many, many articles written for this generation — why you DON’T have to be the SuperMom. Many women I knew had failed marriages because they THOUGHT they were getting into a partnership, only to find out that their husband didn’t REALLY think of them as equals, and the rest of the relationship crumbled from there. I mean, “OK, have a career, but you’re still responsible for the kids, the house, and everything on our home schedule.” And that’s continuing to change — you have to remember, it’s largely the household in which the person was brought up, and it takes a few generations to accomplish a real shift in that kind of attitude. We made the shift to career, now the generation right behind us has become much more equal, I think.

I am one of the lucky ones, I think — though I wouldn’t have gotten married if I hadn’t found someone like my husband. He is my partner, 100%. I’ve had a taxing career, and he’s always been at least 50% of taking care of the children. For awhile, I was making twice his yearly salary, and it didn’t bother him (or question his masculinity) one bit. And now, with my own business, I’m taxed even further than I could have possibly imagined (without the salary quite yet), and that’s fine with him, too.  But with all of this going on, unfortunately, sometimes it’s the kids that fall through the cracks, as hard as we try.

Now, we are VERY strict parents by today’s standards, don’t get me wrong — my goal as a parent is to make sure my kids understand they are FULLY ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. We teach them about the junk in food, and make sure they eat veggies, fruit and as much organic or natural and unprocessed food as possible; we don’t let them watch TV except for a couple of hours on Sunday morning and an occasional movie that we have to approve (really, the TVs are completely off when they’re awake, otherwise); they are accountable for their actions at home and at school, and get punished if they don’t produce what’s expected of them (no “my kid would never do that” – full investigation BEFORE any opinion is rendered); better yet, we DO things together! And, being Type A as I am, with high pressures on myself to be SUPERMOM, I want our activities to be PERFECT, and I always WANT TO DO THE PERFECT THING.

No such thing.

Now, I’ve been a Mom for 11+ years now, and I can’t even count how many times I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide because I think I deserve the Big L (for “LoserMom”) on my forehead, such as

• the time my younger daughter, then aged 2, fell in daycare and hurt herself. It took us about 5 hours and dinner to decide hesitantly to go to the ER to get her arm x-rayed as a precaution (because she was using it fine, it was just a little bruised), to find out she had suffered an impact break across both bones in her forearm (really, she WAS USING THE ARM at dinner!!!);
• the time both kids were sick with a cold (ages 6 and 4 at the time) and I decided to share with them the virtues of herbal steam vapor to help clear their stuffy noses, vs. the OTC junk. As I was putting the Pyrex bowl of steaming, boiling hot water onto the table, the seam in the bottom of the bowl just gave out and broke off, resulting in the water gushing off the table and down the side of my (again) younger child, giving her some pretty intense 2nd degree burns on the outside of her left forearm and her left thigh. It STILL turns my stomach to think about that — that was my All-Time Worst Moment As A Mother (and luckily, we were able to get in to her pediatrician, who’s known us and our parenting practices since our oldest was about a year old, so there weren’t any raised eyebrows as to that cause);
• the time we sent our oldest child (then 5) to school with a couple of marks on her arm because they COULD have been just mosquito bites, regardless of the fact that a classmate had been out the previous week with chicken pox (I was on my way off to a business trip and my husband had meetings that day at work that ee couldn’t cancel) – and yes, it turned out to be a mild case of the chicken pox, even though she’d gotten the shot;
• the time I depended on my older child (who was at the time 8 or so) to tell me the correct time while my husband and I were out in the yard doing yardwork and her sister was at a birthday party. Needless to say, that was a failure, because I called up to her and asked what time it was, she read the (analog) clock wrong, and I ended up picking up my other daughter AN HOUR after the party was over (though I’ve always found it a little funny that no one called to find out where we were when we hadn’t shown up);

I could go on and on, but you get the point. Endless times we sent one or the other kid to school with a dose of Advil in them because they had a little fever from a pending ear infection, and one of us was traveling out of town, had “important” meetings that day, or whatever.

The worst are certain dates (or forgetting about them). With so much juggling going on, we WANT to provide our kids with the perfect life, but it’s not always possible when there are 20 things going on at any given time.

Play dates/get togethers? They are rare – because I figure, hey, my kids are in school and/or in daycare a majority of the week, we want them TO OURSELVES when we’re home!!! Additionally, now that I am a small business owner scraping by, no more cleaning people, which means much more mess, and we’d have to find the time to actually CLEAN the house to have people over!

On the other front, quite honestly, there are few parents we’ve met with whom we’d entrust our children, so there are few houses we’re comfortable sending them, even if for a few hours. Heck, our oldest daughter’s (now 11) best friend is a fine child, but the 2 times she’s been to our house, the parent/stepparent dropping her off has never left the car, come in to meet us, etc. And boy, have we heard stories from our daughter (reiterated from what her friend’s told her) about that friend’s home life. So we don’t let her go over there, because we’re SCARED.

Then there’s a good friend of our younger daughter, who is a sweet child, but we know her father was IN JAIL for an extended period of time, God knows for what, and there are a string of men around with her Mom (and we live in a middle- to upper-middle class area!). The one time we let her go over there, it was for a birthday party, and she came home (without any comment from the mother) with a HUGE splinter that took several days to get out or her hand. Now, we know accidents happen, but I spoke with the mother when I picked her up, my daughter had a Band-Aid on her hand, but the mother never mentioned anything about the splinter or that it hadn’t been taken out or anything. STRIKE THAT HOUSE.

So, we try to keep them entertained and do stuff that’s fun to keep them interested in staying here, with the family, and have their friends take part with us, too, if they so choose. This past weekend, we let the two girls each invite one friend to come with us to a Halloween Trail night at a nature park that is (sort of) in the area. So, they made sure to have their costumes ready, they dressed up, we drove them 45 minutes up to the park, and by the time we got up there — 45 minutes after opening — they wouldn’t let us in because they said they’d sold out for the night. SOLD OUT???!!!! AT A PARK???!!!  Needless to say, my 9-year-old was in tears, and I felt like we were a BIG LETDOWN to our children and their friends. But, my husband and I went with the flow, and we ended up going to a fun park nearby — miniature golf, go carts, and (best yet) an arcade. In costume and all. Though we had to forego the Halloween Horror House they had going for the holiday time (2 of the kids were a bit skeptical and nervous about it), we ended up spending our time in the arcade, and then got ice cream on the way home. And they all ended up having a really good time.

:::phew::: CRISIS AVERTED. This time. One less thing to add to my list of “LoserMom” moments.

And, upon some introspection, I realized that I think I’ve gotten better at this parental rollercoaster. I think, after 11 years, I’ve finally learned that it’s better to just GO WITH THE FLOW instead of fighting and killing myself over every mistake, inconvenience, or problem. Just laugh, shake it off, and move on.

Like I tell my kids all the time.

My Parenting and Other Stuff: A Prologue.

Things that make you go “hmmm…”

I think this is where I will start practicing for my book. Because I’m really going to write it. Really. And I really don’t have too much on my plate to begin with (I only need few more hours in the day — easy to find a 25th and 26th hour, right?). But I have to start somewhere, right?

So I’ll start with my kids. Two girls, 11 and 9. Growing up thus far, they’ve seen me as a busy executive, and now an even busier (if that’s possible) small business owner. Which to me, is a good thing.

Before I ever had kids, I decided that I would do my best to “do right” by them, and try to fix some of the things wrong in the world today through them. Here was my (and my husband’s) recipe, before we ever knew what gender we would have to bless our household:

• For boys:
  • Make sure they have a clue. Now, now — don’t get all up in arms! I have had quite the experience with many of the male gender in my life, as friends, best friends, lovers, and colleagues (which further break down as bosses, equals, and subordinates). And, as I’ve always loved the puzzle of pscyhology vs. sociology, feel that through reviewing many research studies as well as mentally logging my personal experience, a majority of what goes on with boys and men is really sociological. I am really tired of the testosterone excuse, and of (still) the double standards in our world today. The “stronger sex”? Oh, please! Let men have babies, and we sure would be able to take care of population control, because no one would have more than one. Anyway, one of the biggest problems boys/men face is the ability to show and share their feelings, and overcome the social mores of being interested in some of the “things” that go on with the opposite sex.
  • Make sure they understand that it takes men AND women, as partners, to make the world go around. Basically, ying and yang, and all that stuff. I am one of the extremely lucky people who found a man to marry that truly believes and practices the partnership scenario in the marriage. To him, it’s BOTH of us who make the household run, and as long as we get the results, there are no purely defined “roles” that either one of us have. He understands that throughout our lives, we will go through periods where one will overcompensate for the other, and vice versa. For example, there were quite a few years when I was traveling everywhere for my job and working very, very long hours. He had a more laid back job, and thus did most of the kids’ doctor appointments, teacher appointments, sick pickups, and anything else that came our way. He cooked dinner many nights during the week, and has always done laundry (but that’s a blog unto itself!). And now, with my own business, it’s not completely different, except that due to the nature of my business, I’m usually working about 5am-2pm in the greenhouses and on delivery, and I can do my office work flexibly in the afternoons and evenings. And now, he’s just gotten a new job that takes more of his time, so I get to do a lot of the day-to-day kid stuff, because I’m usually more flexible to fit it in. Anyway, had we had boys, I would have made it my crusade to teach them that girls really ARE equal to boys, that both show their strength in different ways, and that it’s OK for boys to wear pink and to cry and play with dolls and show and share their emotions, and that’s it also OK for girls to beat them at a soccer game or in a race or school competition.
• For girls:
  • No matter what anyone tells you, girls and boys are (at least) equal, and girls are DEFINITELY NOT subordinate to boys in any way. The biggest difference: Boys, as adults, have more physical, immediate strength. Girls have more endurance (which goes back to our bodies being built to be baby incubators), and our bodies can typically take more stress for a longer period of time. It’s proven; look at the studies.

    We also tend to solve problems differently, and sometimes one way is better than the other, but if you apply both types in the right kind of situations, that’s the best of both worlds.

    Also, blue is a great color, as are rich, dark colors. Trucks, Legos, climbing trees, playing sports, and studying lizards and just as fun (if not even more so) than playing with dolls, which is what everyone thinks little girls need to do.

  • Suck it up, and be tough. Yes, just like boys need to be more sensitive, girls can and should be tough, too. As I’m not a crier myself, I think that too many tears are wasted on things that aren’t supposed to be emotional. Also, don’t ever use your menstrual cycle as an excuse (nor should they allow anyone else use it to write off why they’re upset about something), becuase it’s not. We all have up and down days. Deal with it.

 And so, we proceeded to have 2 girls, who alternate regularly as the light of my days and the bane of my existence. At 11 and 9, they’re precocious, competitive, vivacious, and yet sweet and loving all wrapped into one. I’ve always told them it’s most important to love themselves first, and that beauty is truly what comes from the inside (which has sometimes been really hard, because they are both very beautiful children, and I had to and have to continue to fight their vanity seeping in). They, too, are black belts in Tae Kwon Do (the four of us have done it together from day one), they love sports and outdoorsy stuff, and yet they also love playing with their Webkins and school, or just like to read.

However, don’t worry — I know I have my failures, and I know this is just the calm before the storm. At 11, my older daughter (I’ll call her B) definitely has pubescence right on the horizon, and it’s my crusade to at the very least keep the lines of communication open — as painful as it can be — because I want to be inside her head through those tempestuous waters up ahead. I didn’t have that during those years, and I think that’s what steered me into some pretty deep and scary waters back then. I know she will make mistakes, but I at least hope they will be smaller and not so scary ones (to me, anyway). The good thing — at her age, she’s already showing signs of the Type A, anxious personality I have as an adult. I say that’s good, because sometimes that prevents her from doing something completely and utterly wrong.

At least so far we can communicate about moodiness and general “oddish-ness” (her word), when it hits her. I opened up that door a few months ago, when she was completely unreasonable, mean, and alternatively weepy one morning before school. So I looked her straight in the face and asked, “Alien, get out of my daughter’s body RIGHT NOW and go find someone else to possess!” Though she didn’t react too much at that moment, thereafter when she was feeling that way (usually in the morning before school), she started telling me that the alien had taken over for the time being. Message from her: “I’m unreasonable right now and I know it. I’ll try to come back sometime soon.” So I give her some space, and it’s usually better.

As for my younger child (I’ll call her S), she’s very tall for her age — only .75″ shorter than her older sister (who is at 75% for height) — and we’re CONSTANTLY getting asked if they’re twins. However, she’s still 9, and mentally not at that same place… yet. My issues with her stem from speaking her mind truthfully, and not saying something because she thinks someone else wants her to say it. And she’s lazy, probably because of having  a little bit of a domineering older sister to lead her, ever since she was born. But with them in separate schools this year, that seems to be waning. However, it does feed into more arguing at home, because she is asserting herself more with her sister, which her sister is definitely not used to!

I’m really, really not looking forward to the teenage years. If we can survive that, we can survive anything.

That’s it for today, I think. I have thousands of little thoughts flying through my brain, and I would write and write and write if I let myself. But I wanted to give you my beliefs in this respect, because I know I will go down this road again and again, and that many of my worries, concerns, fears, and drives come from my husband and I plodding through bringing up our daughters together. It flavors everything in our lives.