My friend’s voice was a bit breathless on the phone as she announced, “Just wanted to let you know, at the next appointment, they’re going to ask him to stack blocks!” She assured me that her son had stacked just fine. I thanked her for this insider info, and as I hung up the phone, I felt grateful that my son still had 3 months in which to practice his stacking before his 18th month appointment. We’d play all kinds of stacking games. This was going to be fun!
Except he didn’t want to stack. Why wasn’t he stacking? We often played with blocks but he liked me to stack them and then he’d knock them down and laugh uncontrollably. Somehow I didn’t think this game counted as stacking. What did it mean that he wasn’t a stacker? Did he have some sort of developmental delays? Should I force him to practice? Was I squelching his creativity by telling him what he had to do with the blocks? The appointment date loomed and still no stacking.
Well, you know the end of this story: my pediatrician didn’t even ask my son to stack. When I questioned the doctor about the stacking, he kindly said (because I’m sure he delivered this line to thousands of panicked parents), “Your son is perfect!” I nodded dubiously, wondering if I should switch to my friend’s pediatric practice and a doctor who truly understood the importance of stacking. As I left the office, my thought bubble exclaimed: “Well doc, if her were PERFECT, he’d be stacking. DUH!” My lingering thought was: What else am I missing? What other things is my child supposed to be doing for which I am not providing the adequate enrichment?
Thankfully my bff’s B, M, and J were there to smack me around and tell me everything was just fine. Better than fine. And as usual they were right. However, their pragmatism did not keep me from experiencing what I like to refer to as my “Kristi Yamaguchi moment” when A approached his 3rd birthday. Luckily this phase didn’t last long, but I started playing some wacky tapes in my head (8 track and cassette because I’m 46) and they went something like this:
How did her parents know? I mean, how did they even fathom that they were supposed to put their baby on ice skates?! And in that sometimes nauseating way that many parents of young children are self-referential, I of course wondered what miraculous talent my own son possessed that I might be missing. Should I be teaching him to use a computer mouse because he was going to create some astounding code? Set him up with a tiny violin? Read Shakespeare to him?
Well, he’s 15 and his sister is 11 and I still don’t have any definitive answers. They must accomplish some horribly mundane tasks: clean their rooms, practice piano/flute/trumpet, do dishes, vacuum, complete homework, and actually talk to us. Yes, I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. But that book only solidified by certainty that happiness is very important. Childhood unfettered by myriad “have to’s” is essential in order for children to figure out the “want to’s” in their lives.
So I’ve lost most of my anxiety about what phenomenal attribute of theirs I’m supposed to help cultivate and am hopefully focussing on what astonishing, fascinating, good-hearted young people they are becoming. Have I been too pushy or not pushy enough? We won’t know until they book themselves therapy appointments and ask for the “frequent couch discount” as my husband likes to call it. Our children are exactly who they are supposed to be right now. As long as they are safe and happy, we parents might consider letting them know that.
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