Holding the Line

Safety Line
Originally uploaded by Rich Baker

Sometimes it’s hard to know when to hold the line. To be the consistent, calm parent, instead of the frantic, mind-fucking parent who changes the rules every time the moon is full or just doesn’t listen.

For example: On Friday, I did a good job with this. I don’t know about your kid, but suddenly the Fox is very sensitive about who is deciding what. And what is very clear is that getting dressed and changing diapers is never his idea.

Now, friend Tracy says, “Can’t he just go out in his pj’s?”

And actually, the answer is “Yes. Yes, he can.” So be forewarned: if you see the Fox running around in an outfit that looks like green train pj’s, he’s probably been wearing them since the previous night. I am okay with this.

But I’ve been giving myself a whole bunch of exercise about how I need to figure out a way to enlist his cooperation with the getting dressed. And then feeling like a big failure, which is exasperating, and which is also like throwing gasoline on the “who-gets-to-decide-fire.” So yesterday I just said: Fox, time to get dressed. “You want to do it or you want me to do it for you?” He said: “You do it for me please, Mama.”

Yeah, right.

He said, “No, no, no, no, no!” And I picked him up and dressed him and put him back down and my heart was not pounding and Edith was not putting on her party dress. Calmness reigned. And I said, “All done! We can still have fun, honey! Let’s do something else.” And instead of launching a prolonged tantrum, he mellowed right the fuck out.

Supreme! I am kick-ass confident mama. This is the essence of parenting! Knowing when to hold the line and just do it. I am great at this! I am a freaking Nike commercial!

So then, that night, I tried it again. Despite supreme mama moment, I was winding up a couple of days of unbroken parenting and was done by the time dinner rolled around. However, this week, as well as having kick-ass mama moments, have had major Ma Ingalls moments and had all this great food cooked and ready to go. Plopped down the Fox’s bowl of brown rice with tomato sauce and cheese. (Have discovered that brown rice is excellent, nutritious, convenient sub for any pasta situation you offer it.) M and I sit down. We all hold hands. Forest says, “Family.” This is our tradition, which I love so much. Then he takes a bite of aforementioned rice and fixin’s and spits it all over the table.

Then says he wants tortellini.

At this moment, my margin of tolerance for being the short order cook is, hmm, let’s see: zero.

I look at M. “I’m done,” I say.

M says, “Forest, I’ll get you some tortellini.” Which is fine. So he gets some, and some sauce. And the Fox takes a bite.

And spits it all over the table.

Awesome.

Then he says, “I want smoothie! I want smoothie, please!”

(As I am telling this later to Eve, she says, “Oh no! Don’t do it! Not the smoothie!” That’s what you think too, right? Me too.)

And M says, reasonably, “Forest, you asked me to get you some tortellini and I did. I want you to eat that tortellini.”

“No!” He is starting to cry. “Please! I want smoothie!”

So, finally M says, “Okay, if you eat the tortellini that I got you, I will make you a smoothie.”

I am fine with all of this. I am not, at this particular moment, giving Edith the opportunity to ride her consistency pony. It’s his shoe leather.

So Forest takes another bite of tortellini and spits it all over the table.

And then he make the noise.

“That was the diaper noise,” I say, referring to when Forest had a gnarly diaper rash and M figured out that he made this sort of creaky cry when his rash was making him feel sad and confused and unable to deal.

“Forest, do you have an owie?”

“Yes,” Forest said.

“Where honey? On your foot?”

“No.”

“On your bottom?” (I hate that word, by the way, but can’t bring myself to say “ass” or “butt” to my two-year-old.)

“No.”

“Where?”

“In my mouth.”

Holy St Christoper and Mother Moon.

He fell last night, cut the inside of his lip on the teeth. The whole situation shimmers into focus. I/ we were trying to hold the line. I thought he was being a pain in the ass. (Am fine with “ass” here, by the way.)

He just wanted to stop rubbing hot tomato acid into his cut lip.

I’ve noticed that my tendency to assume his negative intentions is in direct proportion to how tired/ overwhelmed/ done I am. The other day, Steve and I were at the park with the kids watching Forest run like a really fast antelope, and contemplating how much longer I was going to be able to catch him and Steve mentioned how great it would be if we had little remotes that would just sort of turn them when they got too far away. Like those toy airplanes. And I said, as I prepared to dash after the Fox, “That would be so great.”

You know what else would be great? If I had a little remote that turns off my I’m done = You are being difficult on purpose thing

Now, Eve’s kids are six and four, and she regularly says wise and hindsighty-comforting things. Of this she says, “Honey, we do the best we can with the information we have. With kids this age, we are code-breakers… And sometimes they are just speaking Navajo.”

There are so many places to hold the line in this gig. With the Fox. With myself. With the unnecessary accommodation and with the many, many opportunities for self-criticism.  So, I am going to give myself the props that I deserve, now. More often than not I remember to make these decisions with my heart as well as my head. This, I think is the key. It’s not about blind consistency. It’s about looking, and listening, and doing the best I can with the information I have. (Thanks for that, Eve.)

So, tonight, on all fronts, for me and for the Fox, I am continuing to hold the line.