By the time I found out I was expecting a child, I was already an old pro. Or so I thought...
I’d had ten nieces and nephews on whom to practice all my kid skills. I could change a diaper, wipe cotton candy from a face and fingers, buckle a car seat, and play hours upon hours of silly games. I’d been given countless compliments and told what a great mother I’d be someday. So, when I found out I was soon to be a mother, I thought I had this in the bag.
I had the basics covered, so my thoughts moved on to what I would teach my future valedictorian. Of course, we’d start with learning to walk, forming a few words. Then there were letters and numbers and shapes. We’d tackle reading and writing and basic addition. Surely I had enough wisdom to impart in those first five years that my child would be a stellar kindergarten student someday.
Little did I know that the wisdom I thought I had would be spent in the first sixteen months, and the things I never realized I’d have to know, are still going strong seven years later.
The first deflation of my ego came when I realized that buckling a car seat is much different than installing a car seat. All those straps and buckles and “extra” parts for certain models of vehicles, along with a manual written in 14 languages and a conversion to the latch system, was enough for me to look at my husband and say, “Have a good time, Honey.” Two kids later, I have never once installed a car seat.
From there I quickly realized that when it was my own child, cotton candy was just not something I would even consider buying. Somehow stickiness that requires a full blown bath is not the same as a quick, wet-washcloth wipe down. And those hours of silly games - somebody rescue me! I never, and I mean never, would have started some of those games, had I realized my little thriving-on-repetition child would still be asking me to indulge four years later! And I most certainly would have reconsidered the whole, having children several years apart and having to start all over again madness. What seemed like such innocent fun and gained such a heartwarming squeal of a reward in the beginning, can seem like some sort of twisted, self-torture, by the time they are both in elementary school.
And then there is elementary school. Good ol’ kindergarten, to which we’ve been aspiring for five years. Who knew that preparing your child was such a two-edged sword. Who knew that a sponge, continually exposed to water, would just bulge and threaten to overflow with the slightest squeeze.
All those letters and numbers and shapes that were introduced so timidly, with such little expectations to a small toddler, were consumed like Cheerios and animal cookies. My son could identify the red ball or the matching pair of giraffes in the Noah’s Ark, and well, the entire alphabet, before we expired the first 24 months. When he reached two, he was correcting people’s “childish” vocabulary with words like bison and teal and dogwood. By the time he reached kindergarten, I was exhausted of knowledge and was concerned not only for the teachers’ welfare but for the potential boredom that my son may soon associate with formal schooling.
And yet for all my unfounded academic worries, I learned, to my bewilderment, that there are other skills you must teach a child that never once crossed my mind. There are skills I possess, for which I quickly gained a whole new appreciation and sense of gratefulness to whomever endured my own childhood instruction. For these are the qualities I mistakenly thought were just inborn, somehow intrinsically known to those of us who are of the “higher intelligence” human species.
But apparently, there are just some areas where animal instinct seems to trump our glorified intelligence.
For instance, when I carefully laid out the alphabet blocks to instill a sense of order, or turned that puzzle piece to impart a sense of perception and absoluteness, it never would have occurred to me that despite this child’s ability to grasp these challenging new concepts, there would be others that would escape him like a ship into the fog.
Had anyone ever told me I would find myself giving such ludicrous instructions, I would surely have deemed them crazy and wondered about their own qualifications to raise a child.
And yet, despite the fact that my son could count to one thousand, fly through a set of DVD menus like they were Candy Land squares, and spout off conversation like a 45 year old, I, indeed, had to succumb to the cold-hard fact that my child was challenged in other ways.
Apparently, no matter how many What to Expect and How to Prepare for a Private School When Your Child is Yet an Infant books you read, there is no way to prepare for the confounding of your own brain when you hear yourself say:
“Keep your head up or you will walk into that wall.”
“If you have to cover your own ears, you could just stop screaming.”
“If the other nine fingers are already bandaged, you might not want to touch that again.”
“Because YOU just asked me to, that’s why!”
There are just some things that you never get used to as a mother. Balancing ego with complete and utter embarrassment is just such delicate ground.
It’s that incredulous look from the other mom at the park, to whom you just bragged about junior’s ability to translate from Latin, when your kid is now eating sand or plopping off the slide backwards, that keeps you from ever really becoming too prideful.
But then, maybe it’s good for our own self-esteem too. For the next time she boasts her little one’s adeptness at dialing 9-1-1, you can be sure she’s leaving out the part where the firemen broke through her living room window in an unnecessary attempt to save her life while she simply lay on the floor to retrieve the crayon that rolled under the hutch.
The one good part that comes from eradicating all delusions with your first child, is that by the time you have your second child, you have learned to keep your mouth shut. Because, after all, you never know when they are going to open theirs.
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