Parenting is definitely not for the faint of heart. . .
I am sure that raised some eyebrows when it was read. But don’t overreact - I’m not really going to be ranting. I might try the “You get more flies with honey than a swatter!” As a parent, you have to make decisions that you sometimes wish you could have a do-over but that’s not the way it works. We teach our children from birth it seems to make good decisions, to do the right thing for the right reasons, and to do them whether being watched or supervised or in a field by themselves where no one will notice if you didn’t pick every pea or bean off of every bush.
Let’s start with infants - “Johnny is already pulling up, I think he’s going to walk before he’s six months old.” I don’t know of any parent who would wish for that to happen - can you just imagine the falls, the mishaps, and heaven knows what they could get into walking at six months. Another “proud parent’ bragg is “Look how tall that boy is, he’s got some legs on him.” And I hear this all through elementary, middle and high school. It’s like the parent wants credit for how tall, how strong, how anything their child is. And I consider myself pretty observant and can size up where those comments are coming from. Johnny’s dad or Suzy’s mom wasn’t quite as good at this or that as they wanted to be so they want to relieve their not so glory days through their children.
Last week on one of my favorite episodes of Leave it to Beaver, Beaver has a cavity and has to go to the dentist on a Saturday morning. He’s scared and doesn’t want to go, more so because Lumpy Rutherford has told him the hole in his tooth is small but the dentist will make it big so he can charge more money. That sends terror through Beaver. Saturday comes and Beaver and his dad head to the dentist. Ward is talking him up, telling him he’s going to be a brave soldier, and so on and so on. Well, of all people to walk in for his daughter’s dental appointment - Fred Rutherford and his daughter Violet. They take Beaver back first and tell Ward to stay in the waiting room. No sooner than Beaver hits the dentist chair, you can hear him screaming, “No, no, I don’t want to fill the cavity.” The dental hygienist comes out and tells Ward all is fine, the dentist hasn’t begun the examination yet. No more outbursts and when Beaver walks out, he’s all smiles. However, Ward’s face said all that Beaver needed to see.
They arrive home and Wally is telling Beaver not to worry about dad being embarrassed he acted like a baby, that soon he’d do something that would make dad proud of him again. Downstairs, Ward is telling June how bad he feels about showing his emotions to Beaver, “We watch our kids grow up and we want them to be the smartest kid in the class, the best athlete, the bravest kid and we forget they’re just kids trying to do the best they can. I really failed as a parent today!” June tries to soften it but Ward took his lumps just like he should have.
That night, Ward goes upstairs to talk to Beaver and he acknowledged that he was wrong to put so much pressure on him to be brave, be this. Beaver, in true Beaver fashion said, “It’s okay Dad, you’d have to do a lot worse than that for me to stop liking you!” Ward was obviously taken aback and said, “Wow Beaver, you made that a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.”
As a parent, it’s hard to sit on both sides of the fence, to want to help your child be the best, be the smartest, and yet let them enjoy life, be a child. Education has changed so much in my 72 years on this earth, that it frightens me. It won’t happen in my lifetime, but I can see it happening in future generations, schools started required enrollment at three years of age. I mean I never would have thought baby dolls that wet, poop and drink baby bottles would have been replaced by Barbie dolls at age five. I cringe when I see parents on social media asking what are you getting your five-year old? Your seven-year old? Your 12-year old? Mine has everything. How about an hour of your time to have a coke float? A look through an album reminiscing about various pictures in there? A story about when you were five, seven or ten? Those are called memories and as you’ve heard me say many, many times, “No one can take away your memories.”
I agree with that today as much as I ever have. I can remember Andy Griffith being one of M’s most favorite shows when he was growing up. While we were living in Houston, he had no biological grandparents close by. From birth, a gentleman I worked for at Lindsey Morden became M’s Papa Ferrell and he was the best granddaddy. He took him to his first Houston Rockets game and that memory is forever etched in both of our memories. He was two months old when he went to his first Astros game and that one is definitely one of the best - Astroid came to get his picture made with him. We didn’t make it to an Oilers game before they moved to Tennessee but I’m sure that would have been one for the memory bank also. Aeros games were very more accessible to attend so those memories are not quite as “memorable” as those once in a lifetime ones.
With spring break around the corner, why not make that a future memory - forget the extravagant trips, the cruises, the overseas mini vacations. Choose something where your family interacts, communicates, plays horseshoes on the beach or at the lake - the simple things in life. You never know when that opportunity won’t be available and that’s a short version of parenting from Prissie!
