The Lies We Told Ourselves
Before we became parents, we were the absolute best parents. In our heads we had constructed and agreed upon a perfect set of standards that we would raise our children by in order for them to become healthy, intelligent, well-rounded individuals. We were experts in babysitting our nieces and nephews, keeping them alive for SEVERAL hours at a time and entertaining them long enough to hand them back to their parents, then going home and having a full night’s sleep to recharge and continue our selfish, oblivious, childless ways. Through these experiences and working with kids at schools and basketball camps, we had mastered our constitution of Parental Idealism to create a youngster Utopia. Then we had a kid…and we ripped up the road map. Philosophies of sleep training and breast feeding and not cussing in front of your child go out the door when you can’t figure out why the hell she won’t stop crying. Some of the things we agreed on, we stayed strong on. But the following 3 areas we realized we were separated from reality.
Naïve Pre-parenting Belief: Our child will NEVER eat fast food.
Advice from the Future: Ohhh Andrew and Meredith, you simple minded idiots, have you even tried Chick-Fil-A? Have you ever experienced the bovine design of a restaurant that exclusively serves chicken, chicken that’s been seasoned by the gods? You want your child to eat vegetables that aren’t mushed up from a jar? Better get those green beans from Bojangles’ that have been marinating in ham bone. (Yes, we drove there twice a week every week for damn near a year because it was all Nora would eat). Want to survive a road trip without stopping every two hours? Passing back some Wendy’s fries and nuggets sounds pretty convenient.
Listen, our ideal was from the right place, but impractical in practice. Sometimes your kid needs calories, sometimes you’ve got to get home for their nap and don’t have time for sit-down goodness or to make something, and sometimes fast food just tastes good. Plain and simple.
Naïve Pre-parenting Belief: We will NEVER use a screen to distract our child.
Advice from the Future: Andy, Edith, I laugh at you, you immature fools. Go ahead and relish the time you have when you can just throw anything within reach of them to occupy their attention before that little rascal gets mobile and ruins everything. After they crawl, you’re done. You want to take a shower in some peace and quiet without the icy touch of toddler fingers on your leg reaching through the curtain? You’d better pop that tot on a screen. You want one single moment of peace, quiet, and silence when your spouse has been gone 3 days with work? Let me just prescribe you a small dose of Disney+ and call me in the morning.
We have held strong on not using screens at the dinner table when out to eat so that hopefully she continues to know how to act in those situations. Also, when Mommy and Daddy are both home and available, it’s play time and not screen time.
Naïve Pre-parenting Belief: We will NOT use bribes of food as a reward.
Advice from the Future: Drew, Mere Mere, are y’all empty-headed? You must have the dimmer switch turned all the way down. Do you realize you can get that youngen to eat whatever number of bites you ask for just by promising a single jellybean? And don’t even get me started on the lengths she will go to act right, or clean up, or hurry up, with the potential allure of a Reese’s cup or popsicle.
This one was the toughest one for us to cave on, because we both understood the epidemic of added sugar in the American diet and how that affects brain and body development. We didn’t give Nora much, if any, added sugar early on, and she still rarely drinks a juice box. But, when you calculate the sugar and make it not something they constantly expect, we figured why not. The balancing act we had to do is to not create the concept of “sweets equals a reward”, and that’s a very tough balance. Fruit obviously works, but sometimes we even get avocado to work as an enticement, just find something that they like!
We are curious, what lies did you tell yourself about parenting before you became a parent? What promises did you break to yourself? Leave a comment or post on the link!
