Oh, so you said your first word, “Dada,” and you can sign for food.
I think it is time we have this talk.
Oh, you don’t want to sit down. Let me strap you to your chair.
There.
I need you to be still even though it’s not even your first birthday, and you don’t know what being still is.
Let’s talk about something important: death. Specifically, the death of your grandparents. That’s right, ALL of your grandparents are going to die.
Let’s start with Poppie. Well, he is a lucky bastard. One of those guys blessed with excellent genes, and you can’t figure out why everybody doesn’t have those genes. But he does. He will probably die of old age. But that’s it. All of your other grandparents will go in tragic ways.
My mom will be the first case in history when a human being explodes their head with worries. Some humans have exploded their own heads before. But they have always strapped something to their body to help speed things up, especially those who don’t like that others eat bacon. There is always a claim of a higher pursuit to go along with it. But not your Sandma. No. She is very healthy. She has excellent genes from her father, who lived to be 115. But she worries so much that I’m convinced her head will explode. I’m scientific like that.
Then there is your mom’s mom. She will get a serious case of butt cheek cancer. You might ask yourself, “Dad, is that even possible?” Yes, it is. It happens when you say the word ‘butt’ too many times or when you enjoy fart jokes way too much. Life is a bitch. Your Grammie wasn’t. She was actually quite friendly and funny. But such is life. She has made fun of a lot of people, so karma has come back to haunt her… right on her butt.
What about my dad, you may ask? Even though you don’t see much of him, you need to know that he will likely be raptured by his god. “What is rapture?” Good question. Some people believe the world will end in horrible destruction by plagues and firestorms. Those people also believe they will disappear right before it all goes down. Just as well. Your Sandma doesn’t believe that will happen, but she can get behind your Abuelo disappearing. She has even offered to do it herself.
I’m telling you this for your good. Now that you are scared sh*tless, you can finally be happy and well-adapted. Okay, you can go now and play with your tin piano.
What do you mean, “What’s the point of playing if we are all going to die?”
One of the reasons I love reading about parenting is that it is filled with different schools of thought. In a way, people’s parenting philosophies are an extension of their philosophy of life.
Typically, I don’t pay much attention to what other people are doing, and similarly, I don’t pay much attention to what people say I should be doing.
But there is one particular idea that troubles me. The idea is that children need to be exposed to an “ugly” reality of the world early on in their formative years.
That’s a weird concept to me. I don’t believe in it.
Realism is subjective. It always has been, and it will always be.
There is no such thing as objective reality. We all have glasses from which we see the world, so whatever we think, this realism we are teaching our kids is just our views transmitted to them, so they go into the world and behave how we want them to behave.
My main objective as a parent is to provide my kid with safety and unconditional love. That’s not to say that I won’t discuss them honestly when situations arise. But it is to say that I will not preemptively lecture my kid about all the ways in which the world is horrible while she still thinks raspberries on her belly are the funniest joke created by humankind.
The world is a challenging place, but our kids will get there. To functionally immerse themselves in and deal with it, they first need to develop a sense of belonging, connection, and safety.
Wanting to give toddlers and young kids a “taste of the world” when they don’t know if they like broccoli from one day to the other can only be concocted by someone who has not been robbed of their childhood.
I have, and I must tell you, it’s not great.
Sure.
You are allowed to roll your eyes when someone says that happiness is out of their reach because their parents never went to their soccer game.
I can say, “Neither of my parents went to my soccer games, AND the first movie I remember seeing with my parents was Naked Gun 2–1/2 on the 9 PM showing.” That movie is at the root of my problematic relationships with boobs because, like the San Onofre’s Nuclear Plant, I expect them to help solve humanity’s energy and air quality problems.
End of childhood.
Okay, I’m lying; not about the movie. That was the first movie I saw. Although it is a reference to Naked Gun 1. But I am lying about my AND. So here it is, “Neither of my parents went to my soccer games, AND one night, my mom, my sister, and I did not go back home with our dad because his violence had become so unpredictable.” We never lived together as a family again.
End of childhood. For real this time. I was two months from turning nine; my sister had just turned six.
I would hand that minuscule, insignificant, undeniably stupid bit of self-righteousness and trade it for a stable childhood any day. I would love not to deal with feelings of abandonment, cynicism, and distrust that creep out of nowhere when I least expect them.
That’s not to say that people who were loved and provided a safe environment don’t have serious problems to deal with as they grow older. But it is to say that if you have a choice between providing a safe environment to your kid or robbing them of their sense of safety, why would you choose to provide them with a hypervigilant, unsafe view of the world?
What is this idea that we have to make our kids feel like the world is a terrible place to be in while they still rely on shoes with velcro fasteners?
Bad situations will happen to kids. That’s just not in our control as parents. But we can wait for them to happen and then explain them as they happen instead of preemptively trying to prepare them for every fictional challenge they may or may not run into, especially when those kids sound like they just learned to put sentences together.
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