I used to be a
professional rapper. Wait … no. That came out wrong. What I meant to say is that one time I got
wasted in Manhattan and then spent the evening free-style rapping with a group
of men who I have to assume were in a professional rap group. Or maybe they were cokedealers, it’s hard to
say. What I CAN tell you is that in the
morning it was obvious that I had slept with one of them so I’m pretty sure I
made the team. Also, despite feeling
really confident that I had been in Manhattan, it was soberingly clear the
next day that I was now in New Jersey.
I guess what I’m saying is
that I’m not well-suited to be a parent.
I’m not someone who “works hard to achieve their goals” or “learns from
their mistakes.” Instead I’ve spent my
life bucking authority, never reading the rules in the first place — thereby
ultimately breaking them and being severely punished — and, most embarrassingly,
realizing that my peers had been trudging along in an orderly fashion for years
and were now young professionals whereas I was in rehab. My life has been a real slap in the
face.
Clearly parenting was not
part of the plan. While I was aware that
other people were having children, it was obvious to me that I would instead be
having whiskey so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what would ultimately be
required. Most of my childhood friends
had children years ago and I wondered what had happened to them. I saw women who used to excel at joint-rolling now swaddling their newborns with the same sort of intense precision
and I wondered why they had traded in ganja for shitty diapers. Also, what was all the fuss about? Couldn’t you just throw a blanket on the kid
and call it a day? What was this perfect
origami sheet situation and how could it possibly be important? I watched my friends fret about their kid’s
schoolwork, struggle to buy houses in “good school districts” whatever that
meant, and meticulously chronicle their children’s sports activities, social
events, physical fitness, and general wellbeing.
In the end, I figured having offspring was unlikely, but if it
happened I wasn’t going to become one of them.
I constructed a belief
that is already dissolving before my eyes: I Am Not Going To Be A
Helicopter Parent!
When Perfect Daughter was
born, I played it pretty fast and loose.
I didn’t insist that people antibacterial their entire bodies prior to
holding my kin. I brought her out of the
house pretty quickly with no fears of her absorbing world germs into her tiny,
new, pristine immune system. I wasn’t
going to be overbearing and over-involved or keep my kid in a glass
castle. She was gonna be passed around
like a cocktail. She was going to meet
new people and like it! She was going to
nap when she was tired, eat when she was hungry, and wear whatever the fuck I
had laying around. I wasn’t going to
fall victim to this belief that your kid needs to be sheltered and programmed
and calendared and scheduled. My kid was
gonna live it up and we were gonna roll with the punches!!!
This lasted for around
three months during which she mostly slept and ate so there was little else to
be accomplished. But, as soon as she
started making eye contact and showing interest in the world around her, I started
to panic.
Me: Husband! She’s looking at me! What are three month olds supposed to be
doing?!
Husband: What?
Me: Like, am I supposed to be doing
something? Surely she’s supposed to be
learning something. I can’t just sit
here like an asshole.
Husband: I think she’s
supposed to be raising her head?
Me: Shit! Raising her head?! And here I’ve been letting her lie around
like a fucking blob. Head raising … what
the fuck … How did you even know that?
Husband: I Googled it.
Me: You Googled what?
Husband: What’s my three-month-old supposed to be doing?
Me: You. Are. Fucking.
Brilliant.
Little did Husband know he
was watching the beginning of my demise.
I started a daily Google search so that I could track the milestones
Perfect Daughter was supposed to be achieving and, like a good drug addict, I
got hooked. Before I knew it, I could
not be bothered with any activity that did not immediately further her ascension to
first female president or C.E.O. or Soul Cycle Instructor. Perfect Daughter was going to take over the
world and clearly she needed me to guide her.
I started demanding that all toys be educational. I banned rice cereal because there have been studies
that show it is laced with arsenic. I
forbid all walkers, jumpers, and other gadgets that would have ultimately made
my life significantly easier.
I adopted a theory that, if I was happy or relaxed, my child wasn’t engaged and therefore she wasn’t
learning which meant she would probably end up homeless or worse, find herself
in a position where she thought she was auditioning for a rap group in New
York. Luckily, my inner-voice did a
wonderful job of keeping me on track.
Anytime I thought a nap sounded nice, the alarms would ring and the
helicopter parent that was growing inside me would scream, “A NAP?! ARE YOU
KIDDING ME, YOU LAZY FUCK?! MUST BE NICE
TO TOTALLY CHECK OUT WHILE YOUR PERFECT DAUGHTER LEARNS LITERALLY NOTHING AND
THEN SLEEPS UNDER A BRIDGE SOMEWHERE FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU’LL BE LETTING HER
PARTICIPATE IN SCREEN TIME, YOU PATHETIC DEGENERATE!”
Things were not going well
and I was about to embark in every Helicopter Parent’s worst nightmare —
daycare. This is when you leave your
child with strangers who you’re certain aren’t as smart as you despite the fact
that you’ve had six months of experience with a child and they’ve had literal
years. Regardless, I was on high alert
and things started to spiral out of control.
In the beginning, I
attempted the Perfect Mother approach. I
brought pastries in on my first day.
Then I started handing out individualized gifts to each caretaker with
thoughtful notes written on behalf of Perfect Daughter. I sent emails with helpful hints and
suggestions in case they were wondering how to fulfill Perfect Daughter’s every
want and desire. When these offerings
weren’t met with immediate responsiveness and gratitude, I concluded that my
child was being held hostage by a band of self-important dimwits. I became increasingly suspicious and paranoid
that these women were somehow trying to outsmart me. I couldn’t exactly tell what they were doing
wrong but I knew it was something and I was determined to get to the bottom of
it.
For starters, I found it
to be very suspicious that someone was always holding Perfect Daughter every day when
I picked her up. There’s a lock on the
door (which I approved of because it will keep out the murderers that are rampant
in suburban Glendale, CA), so I have to knock every time I come to get my
precious cargo. I concluded that they
were waiting to see which parent’s car pulled up, at which point they would pay
extra special attention to that person’s baby in order to make it look like our
children were in the hands of loving caretakers and not THE LITERAL MONSTERS I
had convinced myself they were.
Thus began an eccentric
car hiding process — I would park in places that would not reveal my car so
they couldn’t look out the window and ready themselves for my arrival. AH-HA!!!
I braced myself to find my beautiful fawn chained to furniture or
otherwise abandoned. I shared my beliefs
with Husband and he threatened divorce then suggested potential hospitals where
I could maybe “get some rest” and “meet some new friends.” I could tell he didn’t love our daughter
nearly as much as I did and I felt sad that he would have to live alone someday
while Perfect Daughter and I moved forward together in our impeccable lives
void of pacifiers (NO!) and nonorganic baby food (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!).
But my imagined fate never
materialized. Each day, I walked in to
find Perfect Daughter in varying degrees of self-soothing, independent play, or
otherwise general happiness in the loving arms of an Armenian woman.
At this point, I was
exhausted. Maybe it was from all the
extra miles I was walking to daycare while my car hid near a row of
camouflaging bushes. Maybe my eyes were
weakened from the tireless amounts of reading I had done on which toys are best
if you want your six month old to eventually attend an Ivy League school. Or maybe my brain was scrambled from the
constant demands my inner-Helicopter Parent voice was barking at me involving
reading books together every day, having a consistent sleep schedule, only
dressing your child in cotton pajamas, making sure they get 10-12 hours of
sleep a night, don’t forget to lose that baby weight! OH MY GOD, STOP
EVERYTHING, SHE LOOKED AT THE TELEVISION!
ALL IS LOST!
I’ve regressed. After the stalker/believed-to-be hostage situation, I threw in the towel. Perfect Daughter was obviously fine and I was obviously about to spontaneously combust. I stopped trying to trick her caretakers, I’ve started letting her eat whatever she wants, and I don’t panic if someone tries to put her in a jumper (although I will monitor her tirelessly). Ultimately, I just want Perfect Daughter to be happy. I want her to be safe and I want her to be healthy. And every day I try like hell to be a good parent because at the end of the day, I think we all just want the same thing for our kids — each morning, when they wake up, we want them to know which state they’re in.
