In the early stages of my parenting, when my first child was a young baby, I recall waiting in the pediatrician’s office in our former community. I was feeling quite smug about my decision to breastfeed, and even smugger about the choices that I’d made that I considered healthy and wholesome. My baby was only allowed to eat whole-grain snacks, and I made sure to offer fruits and vegetables at every meal. Lollipops remained an unknown substance. Such a good parent I was. I could almost imagine the doctor congratulating me on my Herculean efforts, and awarding me as Parent-of-The-Year, if such an award existed.
And then, next to me, I noticed another mom whip out a bag of orange cheese crackers and a baby bottle filled with a bright orange drink that seemed to fizz with bubbles. Soda? I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt- maybe she was teaching her toddler colors, and today was “orange day”, but eventually my superior attitude won over. She’s a bad mother, I thought, and vowed to never fill a baby bottle with anything but water or milk.
It was so easy to create a mental checklist of what makes another individual a good or bad parent. If they did things worse than me, they were bad. Baby Einstein videos, bottle feeding, and not enough tummy time were incriminating. But there were those that were better. Only organic foods, a mommy-and-me class every morning of the week, boiling each pacifier that fell, all made you heroic. I placed somewhere in between.
But then came future children, and that first baby grew up. And sometimes, I realized, I just had to “get by”. It became necessary to ease up on things that were previously important to me, to let go of some of my former control and focus on other, more pressing issues. How do I stop the kids from hitting? How much attention do they really need? Why does bedtime take a full hour?
I became more flexible on my rigid bedtime (okay, only sometimes). Treats and soda were occasionally allowed on Shabbat, to make the day more enjoyable for the kids. Edible rewards in the form of sugary sweets became routine after the dreaded throat culture. A box of raisins was no longer enticing enough. I slowly was becoming that other mom in the doctor’s office, only I felt I had good reason to be doing so. Maybe she did too.
And that’s when it hit me. I can never really understand the specific decisions people make because I don’t know what led up to them. I don’t know the level of difficulty in parenting certain children but I do know that all kids present unique challenges that parents need to try to cope with. We can peer into our tool bags of skills but sometimes that bag seems empty. And that’s when we employ other devices. The orange soda and chips. A movie. Sleeping in a parent’s bed. Things we thought we’d never do as parents. Lines get crossed that we had formerly surrounded with barbed wire. But we do it. And the kids are fine.
It’s been eight years since I became a parent and my list of “good parent criteria” has drastically changed. Priorities shift. Gone are the days of baby-sign-language classes and pureeing first-foods (when Beech Nut Stages does a fine job of it). The simple has become more complex, and I look at first-time parents, envious of the stresses they struggle with. Small child, small problems. Big child, big problems, my mother once told me. And I miss those small things.
I know that in another eight years from now, I will look back on the present-day-me and marvel at the battles I am fighting, for they will have grown and changed into something new. And I will use a watchful eye to learn to cope, instead of using it to judge.
Sarah Abenaim is a freelance writer living in Teaneck. She is working on her first book. More of her essays can be read at www.writersblackout.wordpress.com
By Sarah I. Abenaim
