I realized I had taught my son how to swear when he was 3. He *loved* all trucks, especially fire trucks. Fire truck t-shirts, wears fire rainboots to daycare every day, the whole deal. We stopped at a red light on the way to daycare one day, the construction site we had been going past finally started to look like the building it would become: a brand new fire station. My son looks over, points, and goes "WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT??!??"
I love the footnotes. I find footnotes to be where an author can do his/her/their greatest work. All today hit home especially #2. I can almost be certain he wasn't one who take a sick day to be home with the kid. They are the ones that give Dads a bad rap.
This piece really hit. Our oldest has a peanut allergy (we are still trying to figure out the severity, another story/another day). She goes to a nut free daycare. We bought Brach's conversation hearts for Valentine's Day. Didn't think anything of it because who in their right mind would expect chalky sugar candy to have peanuts. WRONG. She had some the other night and broke out in hives. Find out that the candy was packaged in a facility that also packages among other things peanuts. I go to the story buy a box of Valentine gummy hearts. SAME THING, so Im left with 70 packages to eat. She ultimately went to daycare with Target's fruit rolls in her Valentine's Day bags. So yeah failure indeed.
She came home from daycare yesterday all excited about all the cards and treats she had and that she was going to share. When asked why did she want to share her candy, "because mommy and daddy don't get candy from their friends and it's good to share with people who dont have things." Cue that feeling of hope/success that we are doing good.
Oh, on one of my first plane flights my parents were lap infanting me and fell asleep, I fell off and started rolling down the aisle of the plane. I believe myself to have suffered no ill effects from this.
Confession: I'm not a parent. Still, I was a child once.
I wonder where/when/how the idea that parents need to be perfect became so widespread. What would "perfect parenting" look like? Is being a perfect human a prerequisite for being a perfect parent?
My younger brother and I grew up with an abusive alcoholic father who died when I was 17. Dad's main motto was we had clothes on our backs, food on the table, a roof over our head, which I guess was the extent of his idea of perfect parenting. Also, "do as I say, not as I do" was employed often.
Through therapy, I was able to forgive both parents their spectacular parenting failures and have had a wonderful life. My brother came out fine, too.
Kids are far more resilient than adults often give them credit for. Parental failures (at whatever level) help them build that skill, which they will desperately need in today's world.
My wife and I had both been teachers for a decade before we welcomed our son, so I think there's this level of acclimation that you're going to fail every day, sometimes multiple times a day with multiple kids, before we got to our own where we learned to brush it off. Which is why it's important to start with a really big failure, like say forgetting to get your child removed from the Baby LoJack system before you leave the hospital and accidentally triggering a Code Pink when he was four days old.
"Each day, the scientist would release a humanoid into the hellish environment of prehistoric Krypton, and each day it would be torn to shreds. Each evening, the scientist would collect what remained, and produce a clone from it. Each clone would be stronger than the last, but each day it would be destroyed anew. Eventually, the creature would evolve into the invincible monstrosity that rampaged through Metropolis and killed Superman."
I've never read this one, but if I were Tommy Rees, I'd be fuckin' terrified right now.
Feb 15, 2023·edited Feb 15, 2023Liked by Scott Hines
What in the elf on the shelf nonsense is this
"Apparently this is a thing now. You put green food coloring in the toilet water and it demonstrates to the kids that a leprechaun has been there and peed in the toilet, and this is supposed to be a good thing."
Ed. I guess it's good the leprechaun used the toilet, but not flushing? Rude.
My nephew hates Santa to the point where saying Ho Ho Ho can lead to tears. So my sister and brother in law have to navigate around telling a 2 year old that Santa is not invading the home while also making sure he doesn’t become a terror of spoilers to every other toddler parent
Exactly the piece I needed to read while struggling internally about the job I’m doing alone with my little one since her mother went back to work. It’s so easy to dwell on the little things that go wrong each and every day, especially when you’re doing it for the first time and unsure about whether or not your child’s refusal to nap or wait more than 2 hours between feedings is going to have some unforeseen consequences. I fall prey to it to often, and definitely don’t acknowledge how I’m crushing the one and only objective my wife gave me: keep our daughter breathing.
Thanks for writing this Scott. It's the sort of year around here where both my wife and I signed our valentines with some version of 'oh my god two kids is so hard' so the solidarity in failure is hitting home today.
Also, the more I think about it, the IRA line is applicable to just about everything in parenting under 5.
Also, God, places that don't offer paternity leave (or that do, or are legally required to offer it, and then try to big business man culture you away from taking it) can screw right off. Sorry you had to deal with that.
I don’t know what gave me more pleasure - the thought on Holly taking care of a leprechaun or footnote 2. Probably footnote 2. That must have felt so good.
I never taught my kid to swear, but I kind of wish I had so he would know the proper context of when it's appropriate to do so.
We received a message from his preschool teacher last month that he was in trouble because "he looked at a friend's pile of cereal and said 'that's a big bitch' like it was the most natural thing in the world."
So now we've been on a hunt to figure out where he learned the word, and the kid has wisely pleaded the fifth during interrogation.
Come for the parenting notes. Stay for the unexpected brief foray into IRA-Thatcher discourse.
I realized I had taught my son how to swear when he was 3. He *loved* all trucks, especially fire trucks. Fire truck t-shirts, wears fire rainboots to daycare every day, the whole deal. We stopped at a red light on the way to daycare one day, the construction site we had been going past finally started to look like the building it would become: a brand new fire station. My son looks over, points, and goes "WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT??!??"
I love the footnotes. I find footnotes to be where an author can do his/her/their greatest work. All today hit home especially #2. I can almost be certain he wasn't one who take a sick day to be home with the kid. They are the ones that give Dads a bad rap.
This piece really hit. Our oldest has a peanut allergy (we are still trying to figure out the severity, another story/another day). She goes to a nut free daycare. We bought Brach's conversation hearts for Valentine's Day. Didn't think anything of it because who in their right mind would expect chalky sugar candy to have peanuts. WRONG. She had some the other night and broke out in hives. Find out that the candy was packaged in a facility that also packages among other things peanuts. I go to the story buy a box of Valentine gummy hearts. SAME THING, so Im left with 70 packages to eat. She ultimately went to daycare with Target's fruit rolls in her Valentine's Day bags. So yeah failure indeed.
She came home from daycare yesterday all excited about all the cards and treats she had and that she was going to share. When asked why did she want to share her candy, "because mommy and daddy don't get candy from their friends and it's good to share with people who dont have things." Cue that feeling of hope/success that we are doing good.
Oh, on one of my first plane flights my parents were lap infanting me and fell asleep, I fell off and started rolling down the aisle of the plane. I believe myself to have suffered no ill effects from this.
Confession: I'm not a parent. Still, I was a child once.
I wonder where/when/how the idea that parents need to be perfect became so widespread. What would "perfect parenting" look like? Is being a perfect human a prerequisite for being a perfect parent?
My younger brother and I grew up with an abusive alcoholic father who died when I was 17. Dad's main motto was we had clothes on our backs, food on the table, a roof over our head, which I guess was the extent of his idea of perfect parenting. Also, "do as I say, not as I do" was employed often.
Through therapy, I was able to forgive both parents their spectacular parenting failures and have had a wonderful life. My brother came out fine, too.
Kids are far more resilient than adults often give them credit for. Parental failures (at whatever level) help them build that skill, which they will desperately need in today's world.
My wife and I had both been teachers for a decade before we welcomed our son, so I think there's this level of acclimation that you're going to fail every day, sometimes multiple times a day with multiple kids, before we got to our own where we learned to brush it off. Which is why it's important to start with a really big failure, like say forgetting to get your child removed from the Baby LoJack system before you leave the hospital and accidentally triggering a Code Pink when he was four days old.
Here's one for screen time and swearing:
The kid was about a year and a half old, I think, and this conversation happened:
"Watch Mickey?"
"No, we're not watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse right now."
"Watch Elmo?"
"No, we're not watching Sesame Street"
"Shit."
Fittingly, I re-watched Edge of Tomorrow a few days ago while doing chores around the house. It is dumb as bricks but such a good watch.
"Each day, the scientist would release a humanoid into the hellish environment of prehistoric Krypton, and each day it would be torn to shreds. Each evening, the scientist would collect what remained, and produce a clone from it. Each clone would be stronger than the last, but each day it would be destroyed anew. Eventually, the creature would evolve into the invincible monstrosity that rampaged through Metropolis and killed Superman."
I've never read this one, but if I were Tommy Rees, I'd be fuckin' terrified right now.
What in the elf on the shelf nonsense is this
"Apparently this is a thing now. You put green food coloring in the toilet water and it demonstrates to the kids that a leprechaun has been there and peed in the toilet, and this is supposed to be a good thing."
Ed. I guess it's good the leprechaun used the toilet, but not flushing? Rude.
I should have known that the Wednesday after Valentine's message would be emotional terrorism.
My nephew hates Santa to the point where saying Ho Ho Ho can lead to tears. So my sister and brother in law have to navigate around telling a 2 year old that Santa is not invading the home while also making sure he doesn’t become a terror of spoilers to every other toddler parent
Exactly the piece I needed to read while struggling internally about the job I’m doing alone with my little one since her mother went back to work. It’s so easy to dwell on the little things that go wrong each and every day, especially when you’re doing it for the first time and unsure about whether or not your child’s refusal to nap or wait more than 2 hours between feedings is going to have some unforeseen consequences. I fall prey to it to often, and definitely don’t acknowledge how I’m crushing the one and only objective my wife gave me: keep our daughter breathing.
Thank you for this, Scott!
Thanks for writing this Scott. It's the sort of year around here where both my wife and I signed our valentines with some version of 'oh my god two kids is so hard' so the solidarity in failure is hitting home today.
Also, the more I think about it, the IRA line is applicable to just about everything in parenting under 5.
Also, God, places that don't offer paternity leave (or that do, or are legally required to offer it, and then try to big business man culture you away from taking it) can screw right off. Sorry you had to deal with that.
I don’t know what gave me more pleasure - the thought on Holly taking care of a leprechaun or footnote 2. Probably footnote 2. That must have felt so good.
I never taught my kid to swear, but I kind of wish I had so he would know the proper context of when it's appropriate to do so.
We received a message from his preschool teacher last month that he was in trouble because "he looked at a friend's pile of cereal and said 'that's a big bitch' like it was the most natural thing in the world."
So now we've been on a hunt to figure out where he learned the word, and the kid has wisely pleaded the fifth during interrogation.