Eleven years ago (plus a few days by the time you read this), my wife Michelle woke me up a little after midnight, claiming her water had broken. My response: “Are you sure?” When she said no, I rolled back over and told her to wake me when she was sure. It wasn’t long after that we were headed to the hospital to welcome our daughter Jayna.
This was not the most auspicious start to my parenting career, and it is like a second career, make no mistake. With all the intensity and excitement of seeing your firstborn child, that moment sticks in my mind. The other one was when we arrived home with our precious bundle of joy and realized just how big a task this parenting thing might be without all those doctors and nurses present to help.
Are any of us ready to be a parent when that time comes? Probably not, but I’d like to think Michelle and I were as prepared as we could be. We were ready to start a family, and Michelle had read about every piece of information that was published about being a parent. There was plenty of advice from grandparents and others who had been through this before.
But that first moment at home? That moment of serene calmness (the last one for many years)? Oh, oh. What do we do now?
Many of you remember that moment as well. It is similar to staring out across a vast desert or to the top of a mountain; there is a long journey ahead, but once your child leaves home to make his or her own journey, there will be a sense of true accomplishment.
There are many trials and tribulations: the first time the baby runs a fever, the first time the child falls down and gets cut (Ahh! Blood!), the first time the youngster intentionally does something wrong. Jayna rolled off the bed, tipped her high chair backwards, and has defied us on occasion. How did we handle it? How did we know what to do?
We didn’t necessarily know the right way to handle it. We just did the best we could and used common sense.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how similar I realized I was to my dad; I think we often parent the way we were parented. What other model do we have?
However, we take into account a generational change and change with the new generation. There were only three channels on TV when I grew up, so taking away the TV wasn’t as big a deal then as it is now. Spanking is no longer acceptable, though I don’t think it did me any long-lasting mental harm.
In the end, most parents do the best job they can and slowly begin to loosen those apron strings. When our kids make mistakes, we have to realize that is a good thing.
This is how they learn problem solving skills; we certainly weren’t perfect either! As Jayna gets closer to being a teenager (the age of mistakes), it’s important to keep remembering that!
Word of the Week: Thanks to Tali Wayne for this week’s word: poppysmic. Poppysmic means the noise produced by smacking the lips together, as in, “The poppysmic she made after putting on lipstick was annoying to her roommate.”
What’s really interesting about this word is that only one author has ever been known to use it: James Joyce in a stage direction in Ulysses. Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!