How I Thought I Would Raise My Kid
Spring, 2009
Now that I’m pregnant, tons of thoughts that whiz through my brain when it’s not busy forgetting where I put my iPhone or telling me that I need a glass of water even though I’ve already poured one and left it in another room. Things like when my baby cries, how will I know what’s wrong? What’s the best way to teach my son or daughter about life? How can I avoid screwing up my child completely? They don’t teach you this stuff on Gossip Girl.
It’s hard to believe that I’m going to be in charge of another human, and that my husband and I will have to make the rules. And get this,14 year-old me: I’m going to end up being more strict than our own mother.
My mom gave us food and privileges that would appall mothers of today. All of the kids wanted to hang out at our house. They were amazed by the boxes of sugared cereal spilling out of the cabinets, in awe of the variety of potato chips and salty snacks at their fingertips, and overwhelmed by candy and soda choices. First visits got a wide-eyed, “We can really eat all this stuff?”
“Um…yeah. DUH.” [Eye roll]
I continued living my “normal” life, the magnitude of the bounty completely escaping me. Friends would watch my mother cook a proper dinner for the rest of our family while I popped a frozen pizza into the microwave. When it was time for lunch, my brothers and I would each yell the name of a different fast food restaurant. Without a second thought my mom would zip through the drive-thrus of Burger King, McDonalds, and Wendy’s.
Like any monstrous pre-teen/teenage girl, I had no idea how lenient my mom was. I was too busy slamming doors, sighing heavily, whining that my “horrible mother” knew nothing, and lamenting all the things I wasn’t allowed to do. When I was 12 she wouldn’t let me hang up a Prince poster that came with my Controversy album. So what if the King of Purple was wearing nothing but a g-string and a come-hither stare, it’s MY room. Note: I got to keep the album and go see Prince writhe around onstage and simulate sex on a brass bed on the 1999 tour.
When I was in elementary school, I thought that everyone drank Coke for breakfast. Doesn’t everyone have an old photo of themselves feeding it their two year-old brother with a spoon, or sipping it from BPA-full pastel Tupperware glasses with bendy straws? Didn’t everyone’s mom have a pair of “toast scissors” they used to gently trim away the crusts, cut the perfectly buttered bread into bite-sized squares, and toss them into a bowl for easy snacking? Didn’t all kids eat their Hamburger Helper dinner lying on the living room floor with The Brady Bunch blaring and flipping through Judy Blume books?
Sleepovers were interesting. That’s when I got a glimpse into how the other half lived. But I just thought that my friends were the weird and unfortunate ones. My mom would drop me off with a picky eater warning label, telling other mothers to shove a peanut butter sandwich into my grubby little hands if I protested too much. “Do you have crunchy? I don’t really like plain,” I’d inform the lesser mothers. In fourth grade I had dinner at a friend’s house and was super psyched that we were having pizza. We sat down at the table and my friend’s mom pulled a tray out of the oven and began to serve us. Perplexed by the lack of brown cardboard take-out boxes and disheartened to learn about the art of homemade pizza, I was not impressed.
The summer before fifth grade, I spent weekday afternoons belly down on the living room carpet with my attention glued to long-running daytime soap Guiding Light. When school started again, I was devastated. I needed to watch my stories! This was before VCRs and well before TiVo was even imagined. I still had to get up to change the channel, folks. I can’t remember whose idea it was, but my mom agreed to tape record Guiding Light for me so I could listen to it after school while snacking on potato chips and ketchup. One of us grew weary of this quickly, but I faithfully returned to Springfield every summer.
My mom supported my interests and let me choose my own books. When I spent weekday afternoons camped out in front of PBS watching Lilias! Yoga and You and attempted to twist myself into pretzel-like shapes to combat fifth grade stress, my mom bought me a book about yoga. Not a big deal for kids today, but I grew up in a time before there were Papyrus-fonted yoga studios on every corner and in a town where you still have to drive at least half an hour to say Namaste. My mom never gave my literature choices a preview read, which is how the the entire V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic series, a tawdry novel based on the T.V. show Dallas, and a book about a New York City ballet dancer being kidnapped and tortured ended up in the library of a fifth grader.
When I relive this time period from a cozy Seattle coffeehouse, sipping fair-trade organic half-decaf coffee many years later, I can almost hear them - the collective shrieks of eco-friendly mothers who rigidly dole out tiny amounts of carefully supervised TV time, if any, and healthy organic snacks.
“What was she thinking?!”
Obviously, there are things that my mother did that I’ll do differently. But I also will have had twice as much time and experience in the world than my mother did when she had me. She was just 20 years old when I was born, not even 30 by the time I was devouring creepy novels and Coca-Cola by the liter. Times were different, and my mother wasn’t armed (or bombarded) with scientific studies that support or denounce various parenting styles. I’m in awe that she raised three children without the Internet. I’m not equipped to handle a common cold without help from WebMD.
My education and professional experience in psychology and research has given me an arsenal of information that she never had. I won’t serve soda for breakfast, fast food will mostly be for road trips, TV will be limited and monitored, and books and other entertainment will have to pass the commonsensemedia.org test.
Of course there are plenty of things that my mother did that I’m planning to do with my own child, like writing notes to my daughter to tell her how much I love her and slipping them into her carefully packed lunchbox. My husband and I just had a discussion about what we would do if our hypothetical daughter asked for birthday cake when it wasn’t her birthday. His answer: Explain that birthdays only happen once a year and that’s what makes birthday cake special. My answer: Go to the nearest bakery, by a piece of cake, pop a candle on top of it, and sing Happy Birthday. He smiled at me lovingly and said, “And that’s why you’re going to be a great mother.”
Afterword
I wrote this essay early in my pregnancy, before I knew that my hypothetical daughter was actually going to be a son. A son who loves “treats” and regularly asks for dessert after eating sweet, syrupy pancakes. And yes, sometimes he gets it.
You may have the “perfect” plan for how you’re going to raise your future child. But how can you know what’s best when you haven’t even met him yet?
Am I saying that you can’t have guidelines or values? Of course not. Just remember that parenting is constantly in flux, and no two children are the same. And even one child is constantly changing.
Be lenient on yourself. Don’t be too critical or spend too much time on “I should have”s. You don’t have to do everything your mom tells you to do - or your doctor, or all the parenting books, or your neighbor, or even Oprah.
You know your child better than anyone else. Mother with your heart and your head. Love them. Encourage them. Give them treats…at least sometimes.
