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Will It Work This Time?
Summertime and the Living Is... Vague
Strings, Excessively Attached
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Tis The Season
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I've Fallen Down and I Can't Get Up
Here I am! Really. Here I am. I tumbled headlong into a pit of sorts but now I am up and about again. Summer is supposed to be one of those times when things slow down and you can space out, but this year has been like an obstacle course. Some of it is kid related. Much of it, in fact, is kid related, but I was in a work slog that made me want to chew off my leg (since it felt as if I really had been snagged in one of those inhumane glue traps for rodents that are banned in the UK). Sadly all self-improvement promises have been forwarded to August just in time for the Summer Malaise to set in. This does not mean it has been a fun-free summer. There has been quite a bit of pleasure found in many forms from butterflies to pint-sized rollercoasters.
But there is also a weird smell in the parenting zeitgeist and that is the smell of competition. I wasn't getting it so much for a long time for whatever reason and suddenly people seem to be ready to brag about their kids again. Just today I got impatient with a post on Slate's "Double X" blog in which a woman, writing about her life's second act, talked about her child's tremendous talents:
"He is an easy, smart kid, and we practise(d) full attachment parenting—nursing, co-sleeping, wearing your baby, diaper-free, and added sign language to the mix. He was pooping on the potty at 2 months (never looked back), and totally out of diapers at 18 months. He topped out at about 500 signs, telling complete stories and songs, and when he started speaking at 16 months he had an enormous vocabulary."
and
"At 2 and a half, he can identify more plants than most adults, already uses tools, planted the whole garden, harvests veggies, sings all day long, still uses sign language, knows all about compost, water cycles, fungi, insects, and even photosynthesis. "
I don't blame her for being proud. This kid sounds like he's got an extremely impressive handle on his world. But I don't care for the bragging at all. I don't know why it has such a place in this article and I'm actually sort of sick of hearing about children being potty prodigies. (It early potty training a sign of great things to come? I always thought of it as a convenience but not much more than that.)
My kids are not prodigies... well one is able to make a prodigious amount of noise and is capable of a remarkable amount of destruction in a short amount of time, but my stories about that aren't interesting and tend to reveal how often this household has to call repair people or look up stain removal techniques. (Baby wipes really do work wonders on a lot of potential stains.) So maybe I'm jealous. Or maybe I just don't see the point of this type of crowing.
Is there a way to talk about the ways in which you are pleased with your child without being insufferable? Does it always have to come off as smug and self-congratulatory?
posted by Elise at 8:43 AM
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