Its strange feeling to have no infants now or predicted. But I assure you I did. I
know because I remain traumatized by a questionable
innovation called tummy time. It was
also known as baby torture. My Dad
thought it was particularly evil. He’s
actually famous for the line “Pick that baby up right now. There is no way that she is going up for her
Bat Mitzvah without holding her head up”.
I’m sure you’ve heard that one, it has gained quite a bit of notoriety.
I’m going to tell you right now that I have four children
who are excellent head holder uppers and perhaps a total of 32 minutes of tummy
time between them. Because I think that
anything that makes a baby scream until actual veins pop out of their actual
heads, just probably isn’t right. Obvious I'm not a doctor because I
totally sleep trained kids by snuggling them until they were so drunk on sleep
they didn’t care where they were. And
no one ever slept a night in my bed because that would have annoyed me too
much.
This theory of “things that make them cry probably are dumb”
appears to get harder and harder to stick with the older they get. Is it universally true that hating to do
something indicates its worthlessness?
Because after tummy time there are about 3,680,922 other things with
which we torture our children. Rites of
passage. That must happen “on time” and
according to some master universal plan and aren’t available for thinking
differently, they are requirements (which change annually).
I have a son who walked at 16 months. This was a HUGE and massive deal at that moment in history. He walks just fine now at age 12, don’t worry
about that, but between the ages of 13-16 months it was a big hairy deal. He even landed himself in a pair of braces
(that he chose to design with butterflies on them) because walking just wasn’t
his thing. I tortured him with that and
I’m glad I did.
Zero fourths of my children are any good at
handwriting. You can try to force a
proper finger hold on any one of ‘em and still no amount of “Handwriting
Without Tears” will make it better. We
have descended into dictation as they got older and my lifelong mantra of
“what, so they grow up to be doctors” has now been heard by most every
professional in the metro area. I am
unwilling to torture them for perfect handwriting – both because I’m a Jewish
Mom and I’d be thrilled for them to be doctors and also because I’m sure that
by the time they have a job there will be brain-to-page dictation.
Nutrition is a biggie around here. One little man who resides within these
walls is famous at the doctors office for eating only chocolate and bacon. Of course he has added cereal and a few other
things to his repertoire in the past years but it has been a sensory struggle that vein attempts at food training could not resolve. Not caring to start off a life of food
forcing and eating disordering, teaching this small man about food groups and
how to make good choices has been quite a hassle in the castle.
So – where do we draw these lines? Snuggling is a yes. Walking is a yes. Nutrition
is a yes. Tummy time, handwriting, pork chops are no’s. I’m sure that the yes’s and the no’s have
been crossed and somewhere I know that there is a therapists chair that will
benefit, but thinking – really thinking about what matters and why - wins out in my dwindling days of parental authority.