Hit by a Pitch

In our kitchen, there’s a box-looking thing high on the wall. Soren points to it and asks, “Whassat?” It’s the alarm, I tell him. “It goes, ‘Boooooooooop!”

“Booooooop!” he says, smiling.

“Wanna see?”

“Yeah!” (The way he says “yeah,” now, instead of just repeating “Wanna see?” is awesome.)

I go over to our alarm system keypad and push buttons until “self test” appears and enter our code, then return to the kitchen, where I sit on the floor and Soren sits on my lap.

“It’s gonna be loud,” I say. “Really loud. Be ready for it.” The self test has kind of freaked him out in the past.

After a few seconds, the alarm goes “Boooooooooop!”

“Ge-gain?” That’s how Soren says “again.”

“No, we can’t do that all the time. The people who monitor the alarm see that we’re testing it, and it’ll annoy them if we do it too much. Only once in a while.”

Surprisingly, he seems satisfied by my answer. This sort of thing never works for bedtime stories, although now that I think about it, I’ve never invoked the alarm-monitoring people. It’s always “ge-gain” and you read the story two or three more times before you can distract him by asking if he’s going to give everyone a hug.

“See how that goes with the other part of the alarm? When we leave, we push a button and it goes ‘Beep.’ When we get home, we push buttons and it goes ‘Beep beep beep beep beep.’” He looks over to where the control pad is because he knows this. When arriving at home, he used to pretend to input the code, his fingers moving in the air. (The way toddlers pretend to do stuff is just about the cutest thing, ever. The other day, he kept giving his stuffed broccoli a pretend pacifier so he could go ni-night.)

“So,” I tell him, “the alarm goes ‘Beep beep beep beep beep’ and also goes ‘Boooooooooop!’”

“Boooooooooop!” he says.

“Yep.”

I love this part of parenthood — the explaining and, really, the learning. He’s learning how things work and, I hope, that it’s good to be curious and inquisitive and that mom is always willing to answer his questions. And I’m learning, I hope, how to provide the right environment and support for him to grow into the awesome (yeah so I’m biased) person he’s going to become. You don’t really think about how important stuff happens when it’s just the two of you, sitting on the floor in the kitchen, but I guess it does.

In my (brief) experience, being a parent is a kind of an organic, natural thing. By that I mean even if you don’t know anything (I didn’t) or read many books on the subject (I read one, and it was aimed at dudes and wasn’t really serious (for the record, I wanted to throw Dr. Sears out the window even though I’m a hippie)), you really figure it out as you go along. As it turns out, the figuring-it-out-without-knowing-what-the-hell-you’re-doing thing is actually where a lot of the fun of being a parent comes in. It’s like chess (only fun) where you have to consider your next move in the context of it being your next move and the context of its potential results in the future. It’s the kind of thing where you maybe lead with your gut (maybe your soul, if that isn’t just too much) instead of your head.

For example, I didn’t need to read any books or have any discussions on any terrible parenting message boards to know that I will never let my kid cry it out, ever, for any reason. I don’t judge those who do, but it just isn’t for me. I won’t put him on a leash in public (I saw one the other day and I admit I see the appeal, but no). I don’t do time-outs. I didn’t force him to undergo any completely unnecessary medical procedures but you’re damn right he’s vaccinated. I don’t understand the point of juice. I figure he’ll potty train (I don’t even know if they still call it that. That’s old school. Tell me they don’t call it potty learning now. Or elimination education.) when he’s ready, someday. He’ll get rid of the pacifier he uses for sleeping tomorrow — er, someday.

(Sidenote: Do you ever wonder about Ben when I go on and on about “I” when I talk about parenting? We pretty much always agree on everything (I know, annoying) but I say “I” here because I’m really writing only about myself and I think it would be presumptuous to lump him in and say “we.”)

Then something like this happens.

We’ll give Soren some markers and a piece of paper and for a while he colors on the paper but then he’s all woohooooo my artistic expression cannot be contained by your silly and arbitrary boundaries, authority figures! I am a young boy who must draw and draw free!

Pop quiz:

What would you do in this situation?

• stop the drawing before it got to this point
• instruct the child on proper drawing procedure and surfaces
• scream and/or drink vodka and then write an ALLCAPS-LADEN BLOG POST ABOUT THE INCIDENT
• make the child clean it up
• spank the child
• express your displeasure verbally and/or through a series of disapproving glances or clucks
• admire the child’s creativity
• clean it up yourself?

Much of parenting is walking a tightrope between raising a sheep-like, rule-following, chickenshit conformist or raising the kind of kid who will grow up to be incapable of gainful employment and relegated to attempting to make a living as a blogger or lifestyle guru or whatever similar shit people will be doing when our kids are adults. Of course, most of us would prefer to avoid both of these tragic outcomes and instead raise kids who grow up to be just as self-actualized, intelligent, and thoughtful as we fancy ourselves. Am I right? We want our kids to grow up to know the rules and follow them when absolutely necessary but also to know when to bend or break the rules, or when to advocate in favor of or fight for new rules altogether.

In the above situation, I tend to admire the child’s creativity and clean it up myself. I know what you’re thinking — I’m well on my way to raising a kid who will grow up to be, what, Honeycrisp Darling, lifestyle guru and peddler of the Radical Self-Love Vibrator, yours for the low cost of $100US.

Here’s the thing, though. I think rules are important and you have to learn to follow them. But sometimes, you’re too young to know what the rules are and it’s going to take a while for you to learn them. Soren doesn’t yet reliably understand that paper is for drawing and the table isn’t. I suppose he could reliably know that if I were interested in micromanaging his marker experience, but what would that look like? Would I have to say “No!” every time his marker touched the table? When it continued to happen, would I have to take the markers away? What would he learn from that? “I shouldn’t draw on the table” or “Mom’s mean and doesn’t let me have any fun” or something else?

I don’t have answers to these questions and to me, the end result of washable marker on a table is harmless enough that I don’t stress about it and might even take a picture. I think it’s possible to not care about drawing on the table now and to have the eventual goal of teaching Soren that as a general rule, we draw on paper and not furniture.

I guess if I had to sum up my philosophy on this sort of thing, it would go something like this: I believe that children are inherently good and should be allowed to explore their worlds freely as much as it is possible and safe to do so.

Yesterday, Soren’s to-do list looked like this:

• 8:00 wake up
• 8:05 jump up and down in crib
• 8:06 scream
• 8:10 get out of bed
• 8:15 run around the house
• 8:30 eat waffles (waf waf) and stuff
• 9:00 continue eating (eating must take 30 to 45 minutes)
• 9:15 investigate whether poopies have been made by you or anyone else in the house
• 9:17 accuse the dog of making poopies
• 9:18 discuss poopies
• 9:30 get dressed
• 10:00 leave for stores
• 10:10 arrive at store, consider existential dilemma as reflected in the sense of helplessness experienced when one rides in shopping cart versus the sense of empowerment achievable while self-propelling through store, decide on self-propelling
• 10:15 throw yourself to floor screaming at least once, preferably in cleaning-goods aisle (bonus points for blocking traffic)
• 10:20 get distracted by a new container of Silly Putty
• 10:20:01 establish that you’re not that easily distracted
• 10:30 pick out Valentine’s Day cards for grandparents (note: they have cats on them)
• 10:45 get really mad when mommy won’t give you her wallet while going through check-out, drool on the one coupon your parents manage to use
• 11:00 drink at least one gallon of water while en route to next store
• 11:02 ride in cart; self-propelling is exhausting
• 11:05 eat 57 of the sample clementines in the produce section; get mad when you can’t have more oranges
• 11:06 become filled with rage when you can’t eat all the blackberries
• 11:10 eat a granola bar from mom’s bag
• 11:20 shriek at the nice old guy who talks to you
• 11:30 wait in the car with mommy while daddy goes to the beer store
• 11:40 sleep in the car for exactly 1 minute
• 12:00 arrive home and go down for nap
• 12:05 pretend to sleep
• 12:15 jump up and down in crib
• 12:20 jump up and down in crib and scream
• 12:30 get up and have lunch
• 1:15 run around like a madman
• 1:30 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THE BUDDHA, THE UNIVERSE, ANY HIGHER POWER OF YOUR CHOICE OR NO HIGHER POWER WHATSOEVER, THE SOLAR SYSTEM, ZEUS, ROTTWEILERS, JOHN MADDEN, OR ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TAKE A NAP EVER
• 1:45 jump up in down in crib and scream
• 1:55 jumping and screaming 1/14/12 never forget there can never be enough
• 2:00 ever to sleep would be admitting weakness
• 2:05 okay fine sleep
• 2:30 have dad suddenly and terribly wake you up because you have somewhere to go
• 2:35 get dressed
• 2:45 unwillingly have a jacket applied to your person
• 2:46 leave the house
• 3:00 PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY with other children yay!!!!!!!!!!!!
• 4:15 CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE
• 4:45 to 8:30 at home, run around like a madman, dump all toys on floor where they must remain no matter what, run around, eat a nibble of something for dinner (optional), cry, scream, run around, get mad, throw toys on floor, experience the singular horror of toothbrushing
• 8:30 enjoy a lovely bed-time story
• 8:40 jump up and down in crib
• 8:45 jump up and down in crib and scream
• 8:46 be silent just to mess with them
• 8:50 jump up and down in crib
• 9:00 continue jumping up and down in crib
• 9:15 etc. etc. etc.
• 9:30 zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz