Raising kids is hard; hard but not impossible.
You think you know everything until the first time your kid does something like dash out into a street and gets hit by a car and this from the kid who ALWAYS stopped ten feet from the corner.
You think you know everything till the kid who has played soccer his whole life tells you he wants to quit his senior year to take up break dancing.
You think you know everything until the kid who loves you to death hides a secret note in his room on which is scratched the details of how much he actually hates you and you find it.
You think you know everything until the kid who would tell on himself for peeing on the bathroom seat steals a teacher’s gift card behind your back and then tries to buy you flowers with it.
You don’t know jack but it’s cool neither do I.
So the first trick is to own up to the fact that when it comes to raising kids we are all novices, there are no experts. And if an expert one day then don’t worry, a novice the next as your children continually surprise you, delight you and make you want to rip their hair out. I mean your own hair out, your own.
As a 20 year-old with nothing more than babysitting under my belt. I listened when my mom told me to wipe the baby’s butt with cotton balls and baby oil, poor raw thing that it was.
To her face, I said “that’s stupid” but the minute I could get up to CVS to get my trial-pack hideable-don’t-have-to-admit-she’s-right-if-it-doesn’t-work-sizes. I took her advice and raw-butt problem: solved.
When the Internet and television about parenting came out it was both a boon and a bane. Loads of information. I got a little caught up in it when I put Donovan into the timeout chair 36 times aka Super Nanny style. It didn’t work.
But I have tried.
That being said, there’s advice and then there’s assvice (I just made that word up- you like it?)
Assvice sounds like this.
“No offense but your newborn really is too young to be out without a hat.”
I heard a woman say this to a frazzled new mother in Target who was barely holding on, tenuous at best.
New Mom was clinging to her Starbucks like it was the winning lottery ticket and trying to get through a three-person line with a crying newborn that to a new mother sounds like a tornado siren.
Assvice.
But there are a lot of good people and good advice and tips of the trade if you are willing to listen and mommas stop baring your mama-bear teeth because sometimes someone standing on the outside may have better perspective than you.
So when people who love me tell me I am doing do something wrong. I listen, because they might be right.
At first, I don’t because I am too busy internally slapping them in their insolent face. After mentally climbing halfway over my own ego I just pretend to listen and smile facetiously and say things like “Yes I see. Interesting.”
Then I go home and draw a bath, pour myself a drink and that’s when I actually hear what they said and if it’s of value I use it because my kids are worth it.
And yes it’s kind of hard to hear you over my gnashing teeth and clenching fists,
Hard but not impossible.
I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
About Rebecca Suder