RAISING CAIN

Here's my take on parenthood for when the babies start arriving.

RAISING CAIN

I was thirty-three when I realized that my mother didn’t have all the answers. Up until then she was Einstein, Glenda the Good Witch and a warm puppy all rolled into one. The event that precipitated this sudden revelation was the delivery of my first child. I had just assumed that with her birth would also come wisdom. Boy, was I wrong. In fact the only wisdom that came my way was the certainty that I didn’t know a thing; and my mother wasn’t far behind. We were both clueless. Oh, she learned a lot raising my brother and me, but we weren’t exactly the perfect children. Besides, that was before Penicillin. Times had changed. This baby had potential, if her father and I didn’t screw it up.
Unfortunately, parenting is a learning curve that doesn’t benefit the first born. There are books out there, Dr. Spock and all, that claim to help, but who has time to read while nursing on demand and doing endless loads of baby laundry? I read the LaMaze book on the way to the hospital--in labor. So, for better or worse this little bundle of joy, this blob of human skin and bones, this tiny human being, would be raised just like all the other first children in the world. By trial and error.
Parenting skills are safe from scrutiny while the children are toddlers, but Oz’s omnipotence slips a notch when they go to school and start trading information with the other kids. That’s when ‘because I said so’ starts to lose its muscle. They start comparing you with their teacher, the only other adult that has direct power over them. “Miss Smith says you should give me more green vegetables.” Even though the kid makes a gagging sound if you put more than six peas on her plate. “Miss Smith says you should read to me for at least a half hour every night.” Even though the kid always falls asleep after five minutes. By the way, the only thing Miss Smith knows about children is what she learned in college. No trial and error here. The only way to maintain an appearance of wisdom is to enter into a conspiracy with Miss Smith and the other parents. As they say, knowledge is power. This will keep you at least half a step ahead of the children.
It’s surprising more children don’t walk around in a state of perpetual confusion. They must wonder why they get yelled at, not the first time they do something, or even the second or third, but somewhere around the twelfth or fourteenth time. They don’t realize that it’s not the activity but the repetition of the activity that eventually gets your attention. I have yet to meet a child who has any idea that bouncing a basketball against a wall five thousand two hundred and six times could be even slightly irritating to an adult trying to pay bills or concentrate on taxes. Believe me–if they understand this and do it anyway, God help us when they choose our nursing home!
My daughter learned a neat trick when she was around seven, the so called ‘age of reason’. Any time her father or I started to scold her for an infraction she would pipe up with, “You never told me not to do that. You can’t punish me for doing something I didn’t know was wrong!” Then she’d slip away leaving us standing, speechless, in a puddle of logic. Needless to say, she avoided a lot of lectures. This continued until she was old enough for the ‘common sense’ rebuttal. Believe it or not children do eventually hit an age when they can figure a lot of things out for themselves. Then they hit an age when they know more than their parents. Then they hit an age when they realize, as I did, that they don’t know anything.
Thank God for the pediatrician. A light in the darkness. In 1980 when my daughter was born, there was a big controversy about how babies should sleep. Back? Front? Side? My husband and I, being medical professionals, should have known the answer to this one but it wasn’t a simple question anymore. For lack of an answer we put her down on her side, wrapped like a papoose, propped from behind, just as she had arrived by my hospital bed from the nursery. That worked for a while until several women who had much more experience than I (their babies were a few days older than mine) needed to disseminate advice. “Her head will get flat. Put her on her back!” I have to admit being a nurse can be a disadvantage here. I saw my little darling spitting up (which is a euphemism for vomiting) and choking to death. Ergo my first call to the doctor, who remembers his patients by name but calls their female parent ‘mommy’. “Put her on her back, mommy,” was his sage response. Oh well, if something terrible happened I would have someone to blame.
And so it goes–mountains of incoming data from people who don’t have credentials any better than your own. Plenty of old wive’s tales from my mother, who was, after all an old wife; and advice shouting at me from every TV, radio and newsstand I passed.
Now that my daughter is on her own I can heave a temporary sigh of relief. She doesn’t have a husband and won’t be a parent any time soon, one hopes. It will be a while before she learns the sad truth. The function of a parent is to keep kids from poking their eyes out, playing in traffic and running with scissors until they can take care of themselves.