Daily Excerpt: I Love My Kids, But I Don't Always Like Them (Bagdade) - Right-size Your Expectations
excerpt from I Love My Kids, But I Don't Always Like Them by Franki Bagdade
Right Size Your Expectations!
One day, you open your eyes and realize you’ve been sleeping on a regular basis, as if you’re a real human being! Most nights, those evolving little humans you created now fall asleep without any complicated strategy and they wake up feeling refreshed. You no longer keep a running tab of how many hours in a row you actually slept or even how many nights your children didn’t wake you up at three a.m. to eat a peach or discuss their favorite cartoon. Free of these chronic disturbances, you and your spouse don’t argue about who has woken up more before dawn (spoiler alert, I won that fight), and that realization is life changing. If you’re not there yet, you will be one day, I promise. It happens to the weariest of us.
With the renewed confidence this sleep will bring, not to mention what it can do for your health, you may start leaving the baby gates open or take them down all together. You might even put the diaper genie out with the trash with a tear of happiness in your eye. Whatever ritual it may be, it is now residing in your rearview mirror.
You can finally relax. Hallelujah!
Believe it or not, you can make dinner without holding a child in one arm. I’m not saying you want to make dinner, but technically you could… or should.
You begin saving thousands of dollars on diapers and baby food. You beam with pride as your child navigates Netflix independently, at least until he or she discovers a movie that you might not even be brave enough to watch. You can leave the room without worrying about the sharp edges of your coffee table causing your child to have a near death experience. You might go as far as removing the giant emergency number magnets from your refrigerator and stashing them in a nearby drawer… just in case.
Then, your adorable child returns home from a day in kindergarten with a backpack bigger than she is and shows you her daily planner, reading log, homework folder, PTO flyer packet, spirit week dress-up list, and instructions for a Google log in. In that moment, your heart sinks a bit. Hmm, now what? Do I have a guidebook for what happens next?
The baby center doesn’t offer a forum on what to do with your kid now that she is beginning to have a life of her own. I check YouTube but can’t find an appropriate training video for this juncture in my parenting life. I thought they had one for everything under the sun. I planned for life with babies and toddlers and took pride in continually being able to outrun them, but I’m not sure I was prepared for kids!
As your new reality sinks in, you start to have flashbacks of sitting at the kitchen table with your mother, arguing over homework and requesting your favorite foods for dinner. As you revisit those old tapes, you realize that this is your life now. You’re the one in charge of scheduling and menus and rules of behavior.
In a moment of great remorse, you call your parents and beg for forgiveness for being such a giant pain in the … they know what. You can’t escape and take a nap. Oh no, that’s not allowed or even advised. You’re on your own because your spouse has cleverly figured out how to be employed and spend eight to ten hours a day in an alternate location. You are being left to your own devices, and I don’t mean your phone or laptop. Why didn’t anyone write What to Expect Five Years After You’re Expecting? You need the sequel right now, a step-by-step guide to parenting through these basics.
It’s hard to comprehend how people do this every day, seven days a week, for years! You are drowning in lunchboxes and homework and flyers and the paperwork that comes along with modern child rearing. You think you have mastered the color-coded Google calendars, yet you and your daughter still manage to show up for other kids’ birthday parties on the wrong day and pediatrician appointments in the wrong week (not that I have any firsthand experience with this.)
Just when you think you can’t take one more interruption or surprise or disturbance, as in “Mommy, I have to tell you about this thing,” your child may bring up a whole new set of issues you never anticipated while you were playing peek-a-boo, changing diapers and blowing bubbles.
Almost overnight, you start hearing your child complain and question kids at school who are not being kind. She wonders aloud whose birthday parties she is being invited to and who is not including her. She doesn’t understand why her soccer coach didn’t let her score all the goals, not realizing yet that she’s playing on a team instead of in her own backyard.
The issues can be anything. Some kids struggle to read; some struggle to sit still; some don’t understand why they can’t make friends, and some teach themselves how to read and find school instruction a bore.
You have parent/teacher conferences and see bar graphs comparing your child’s skills to those in their district and across the country. You hold your breath, hoping that your child’s teacher “gets them” because they are so much more than their test scores, lunch account number, virtual passwords, and cubby #4. Do they see what you see? Don’t they realize that your son or daughter truly is the cat’s meow, even if they are actually allergic to cats, and peanuts and eggs? This perfectly imperfect human being, who makes your heart explode with joy and your extremities tremble in fear and confusion at every turn, is now becoming an actual person.
And then, for no apparent reason, seemingly out of the blue, you’re not sleeping again. The kids are sleeping, but you are not. Your spouse? Let’s not go there. (How do they do it?)
Who thought I could do this, anyway? Parenting? Actual little people? I mean seriously, how do I know when to worry and when it’s a phase?
I took a birthing and baby safety course when I was pregnant, but no one trained me for raising actual children! How do I know what is normal? When does my worrying become productive and necessary? When is the stress I feel a result of good parenting? When is all the fretting just wasted time and energy?
I’ve looked everywhere and no one has come up with a cute name for “The Driving Me Crazy Sixes.” I can’t find any help when I Google “The Sassy McSassy Eights.” No one has anything to say about “The Old Enough for Boarding School Tens.” The internet goes nowhere with “The She Knows Everything and Could Parent Better Than Me Twelves.”
After more than 20 years sitting on the other side of the table with parents, and from learning from my own mistakes, here is my advice to other parents: Listen to the experts, even when it hurts. Listen to teachers, pediatricians, and camp directors. If a professional working with your child has a concern and shares it with you, just thank them and listen. Let me repeat. Listen. Whatever is going on may be no cause for concern; however, these professionals observe countless adolescents on any given day and know when a child stands out for reasons that require compassionate attention. If your situation needs legit consultation, why wait until it gets out of hand? What’s the point in that? No one is keeping score. There won’t be a neighborhood billboard going up to announce that you’re not a perfect parent. After all, that would require a perfect parent to put it up and they don’t exist!
So, if you think you need help, ask for it! If you are struggling with parenting, which we all do, then this is a good time to check your defensiveness at the door! Listen to yourself as well. If your parent intuition tells you something isn’t quite right, and if you observe major differences in your child and others of a similar age, it’s time to consult an expert.
You can always start with your pediatrician or your child’s teacher or social worker. If your child needs additional help, they can probably guide you to the right place and person. (You will find professional consultants, etc. in the Resources section in the back of the book.) Before you settle in for another sleepless night, study up on your child’s age and know what to expect and what not to expect. This will give you some perspective and maybe even comfort as you go forward to try and solve the issue.
In my experience as a teacher consultant, I am often brought into a classroom for a specific concern and realize that the child in question is showing developmentally appropriate learning or social skills. Checking their record, I see that they just happen to be the youngest in their class and a little behind on the developmental curve. This is especially true if you are in an affluent community where parents are well-educated and able to offer language rich environments for their children.
It’s also important to remember that young children, from birth to age seven, change and grow quite rapidly. “I blinked, and my son went from diapers to winning chess tournaments!”
All joking aside, if you’re comparing your child to someone just a few months older, you may not be evaluating their development appropriately. If you’re not sure, seek out a reputable resource, such as your local, county or state health department. Examine ages and stages and ask your pediatrician for more information or consult reputable sources online, like The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or The American Academy of Pediatrics, which just brush the surface of what is available nationally or in your specific area.
Once you better understand what is developmentally expected of your child, you can get to know your children as the awesome individuals they are. Respect their personal limits by adjusting your expectations because one size does not fill all, not even close.
By keeping an open mind and embracing good advice, you can learn to enjoy your child again. What a gift that would be for both of you! To be honest, you won’t be blissfully parenting all the time, and it would be foolish to expect that, but that’s okay; it’s normal. This is a hard job, but someone’s got to do it!
You love your children, but you don’t always like them. Sound familiar? Join the club.
Franki's book was selected as IAN Book of the Year
For more posts about Franki and her book, click HERE.
To purchase copies of this book at 25% discount,
use code FF25 at MSI Press webstore.
Want to buy this book and not have to pay for it?
Ask your local library to purchase and shelve it.
 |
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?
Check out information on how to submit a proposal.
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our author au pair services will mentor you through the process.
Julia Aziz, signing her book, Lessons of Labor, at an event at Book People in Austin, Texas.
Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.
Comments
Post a Comment