Face it. Reading all those advice books on how to raise a happy,
healthy, well-adjusted child can really get a person down. There’s
something about all of that good, practical parenting advice that
makes my flaws seem much, much bigger.
Face it. Reading all those advice books on how to raise a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child can really get a person down. There’s something about all of that good, practical parenting advice that makes my flaws seem much, much bigger.
Sort of like trying on bathing suits in an open dressing room next to members of the Olympic swim team. But worse.
When this happens you can always try to make yourself feel better by, say, eating lots and lots of chocolate. But over the years I’ve found that a much more effective and lower-calorie way to feel instantly better about your parenting skills is to simply find parents who are doing a worse job than you are. Ok, so maybe this isn’t a particularly wise or noble solution, but, hey, it works.
Take, for instance, the other day. I was feeling particularly guilty because of forgetting to sign a permission slip for one of my sons, so I took my kids to the local park. Once there, I sat on a bench and played a little game where I sorted all of the Horrendous Parenting Wrongs going on around me into various categories in my head. Sort of like I Spy‚ but a bit more mean-spirited. Needless to say, I was immediately cheered up.
Fashion faux paus: I saw two babies without hats. A little girl wearing a bathing suit and ballet shoes. A boy wearing Winnie the Pooh pajamas and a bucket on his head. A girl wearing a piece of toilet paper around her neck like a scarf. Three different kids wearing Christmas ornaments as accessories, too-big rain boots, too-small Halloween costumes and lots of tiaras and questionable veils. And to my joy, I saw a particularly tired-looking mom wearing sweats and bedroom slippers.
Totally Inappropriate Food Items: I witnessed one boy eating a Velveeta cheese sandwich. Another child seemed to be trying to digest a plate of plastic spaghetti. Dirt cakes. White bread dunked in grape juice. Mystery sandwich meat. Sand. Leftover Halloween candy.
Miscellaneous Gross Stuff: There was a kid licking the slide. A little boy wiping his nose with his sleeve. A Malibu Barbie missing an arm. Kids mashing dirt and water together to make a special kind of green mud. Several stuffed animals that smell like rancid apple juice.
Conversations: “Robbie, please stop singing ‘What Can We Do With a Drunken Sailor‚'” “What exactly to you mean by ‘potty accident‚ in the sandbox?'” “Now, now. We don’t run over snails with our tricycles.” “Because I said so, that’s why!”
I must say, there‚s nothing like a day of watching other people’s kids at the park to make you feel so much better about your own parenting skills. Like the time my friend Linda was feeling especially low when her daughter got in trouble at preschool for calling another child a “Doodyhead.” She spent several hours doing some deep soul searching to find out where, exactly, she’d gone wrong. However, as luck would have it, she went to the store she saw a woman with a little boy wearing a pair of cowboy boots. He had two bananas tucked into each pant pocket that he’d use to sporadically pull out and shoot unsuspecting passersby. Linda went home positively gleeful.
Of course, as with most self-righteous feelings, those of smug superiority never last.
And, yes, I’m sure there are a lot more positive and practical ways of making myself feel like a good parent. Like, maybe, being more patient with my kids. Or perhaps cooking homemade meals. Or maybe, just maybe, reading one of those parenting advice books. But, where, I ask you, is the fun in that?
