Parenting by the books. You're doing it wrong, which, ironically is right

Have you ever been to a bookstore and looked at how many parenting books there are? There are books for every age, in fact there are books for what to expect BEFORE the child gets here.

So basically, we’re piling on the you’re doing in wrong guilt three weeks after the stick you peed on turns blue.

There are all these decisions to be made from the time the child is conceived. OB-GYN or midwife? Hospital or birthing center or home birth? Epidural or natural? (I recommend the drugs, almost from the time the pregnancy test comes back positive) To video the delivery or not.  (the answer to that one should always be NO unless you can get a stunt double for Mom then maybe.)

After the birth there are the important questions, cloth or disposable diapers, breast or formula, daycare or nanny, gin or vodka.

No matter what choices you make, no matter the reasons, no matter your thoughts or feelings or the fact that you were the one screaming as this wrinkly red screaming person was pushed from your hoo-ha, there are those out there who will tell you, You’re doing it wrong.

Because they know best.  Clearly.

The thing is this. Unless you’re beating your child, feeding them crack, buy them a pole for their third birthday, you’re doing it right.  You’re screwing them up just like the rest of us.  Our parents screwed us up, their parents screwed them up, and our kids will screw up their kids.   It keeps therapists in business.  My sister (who is not a parenting expert, clearly. She just plays one for the purpose of this blog post.) has said of her two sons, “I’m not saving for their college education, I’m saving for their therapy.”  It’s the circle of life.

Our parents managed to raise us without eleventy billion parenting handbooks. They did the best they knew how to do with what they had, and guess what? Most of us turned out fine.  There are the exceptions (Miley Cyrus, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan), but most of us…OK.  I think the basics are, if you are present in their life, spend time with them, not at soccer practice or dance class, but them, and if you let them know they can talk to you about anything, well, then, you’re doing a damn good job.

My sister said in a text message to me today “Every kid is like a new car. It’s going to get dented/scratched. You’re better off taking a hammer to the fender on the dealer’s lot so that you can enjoy the car rather than being all freaking stressed constantly about avoiding the ding”   While we don’t advocate taking a hammer to your child, the thinking is, “just like a car depreciates in value as you drive it off the lot, and nothing is perfect forever, you as a parent are going to blow the ‘perfect” thing by the end of day one.” It’s easier and less stressful if you just accept that somewhere along the line you’re going to screw things up, but look at them not as mistakes, they are character building activities.  And their therapists will thank you years later.