Parents: Relax...But Get That Diptet First

Why is it that so many in my generation have become complete freaks about parenting?  I'd like to give part of the blame to the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting", Baby Mozart, Baby Einstein and all that other hype we were told was "best" for our babies. We were somehow led to believe if we did everything perfectly we'd produce perfect little people.  Well, last time I checked our kids are pretty much just as flawed as every other generation of human beings before them.

God bless my mom for not laughing out loud when I was pregnant.  I'm certain she laughed behind my back.  In 1967, Mom was told by her obstetrician to "calm her nerves" with the occassional glass of sherry and to rely on putting us in the playpen for a few hours for her sanity.  I remember being horrified by this information when she first shared it with me, but now, years later I find it hilarious and somehow...wise. When I was expecting I felt completely evil for indulging in a rare glass of wine and was convinced I was a spineless slob for caving to cravings for drive-thru french fries. My oldest is lucky he wasn't born with a little red cardboard sleeve around him emblazoned with the McDonald's logo.

The message was clear in the 90's: parents were directly responsible for their children either becoming the next genius philanthropist or the next Jeffrey Dahmer.  It all hinged on pre-natal diet, exposure to classical music, and toys that stimulated the brain.  Using a playpen was pretty much child neglect. Everything I heard and read was that my children's minds and bodies needed stimulation and I was directly responsible for it.  So I stuck them in bouncy seats, johnny jumpers and rotating thingies that had mirrors, buttons, and bright alphabet letters and numbers.  We went on jaunts to the park, the petting zoo, museums and the library. I felt overwhelmed with the weight of making sure my sweet little boys didn't turn out to be complete morons or worse, felons.  It was information overload with all the rules to follow to be a good parent and ensure my boys grew to be productive members of society. I felt like poor Ed in Raising Arizona. "He's gotta have his diptet!!"

Go ahead, hit play. You know you want to.....

Shining through the fog of early motherhood, it miraculously came to me that my own intuition was a far better authority than any expert's opinion.  My second child was perfectly happy to lay on a blanket and play with his toes and skip all the activity my older son had reveled in.  I knew by looking into his eyes he was just as bright and just as healthy as his big brother. (Which was a another miracle, considering he pretty much swam in french fry grease in the womb) Trying to stimulate the second one was just plain unfair to who he was as a little person.  That and the fact that I'm basically lazy.  So I began a personal rebellion against the parenting "authorities" and all their confounding rules.  I'm not saying I didn't listen to my pediatrician, but I did begin to take every new piece of information with a grain of salt and question certain practices that went against my common sense. I had a friend call me in all seriousness one day and urge me to stop using night lights in the kids rooms because a new study showed they stunted developing eyesight. I politely listened, hung up and ignored the advice. It was fun to buck the rules and go with my own intuition.  It just felt better, liberating, in fact. I've never regretted it.

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow my generation seems to have lost basic trust in ourselves as parents. I say this because I slip down that slope myself. We defer to the experts and to others who seem to have it all figured out and sometimes ignore our own common sense.  I think it's the desire to do the right thing and not to mess up.  That's totally admirable, but the problem is life IS messy.  We're gonna mess up.  And so are our kids.  Haven't we all learned from making mistakes, picking ourselves up and moving on?

I'm feeling like clueless Ed again these days as one of my boys prepares for high school and another for college. There is so much information out there about grades, sports, SATs and colleges and a lot of is scary as hell.  I'm hearing a lot of noise from experts on sports nutrition, trainers, test prep classes, which teachers to avoid, which ones to request, which colleges are best and what you have to do to get in to them.  It's overwhelming and exhausting and if I tried to follow all of the advice I would lose my mind.  I love my boys, we all love our kids madly, don't we?  Which is probably why we are all a little insane about parenting them.  But we have to love them enough to let them be themselves, to blaze their own trail, to make their own decisions and to sometimes make a mess of things.

I've made a point to step back and let them learn to trust their own instincts.  They don't need me hovering over them making them nervous or they will always question their own intuition.  They'll figure it out.  And one day when they are parents themselves and seek my advice, I'll be there. Perhaps with a glass of sherry and stories of my struggles to help them laugh at themselves for taking things all too seriously.