Yesterday when I picked up my son from pre-preschool, his teacher emphatically declared “Your son is so smart! He knows all of his ABC’s and not just by singing the song. He can pick out any letter on the wall!” Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. I said, “He can almost read and spell too. He’s a freaking genius.” I didn’t say that last part. Not to sound too braggadocious but my son is obsessed with letters and numbers right now. He can almost count to twenty. He can spell his name and water. (Right now we spell water about ten times a day. He’s a bit compulsive.) And dog and almost cat. He recognizes the actual names of family members: dada, mama, gaga, papa. When we take walks, he likes to stop at sewer holes (which is where his obsession with the word water came from). He also likes to stop at parked cars along the street and spot all of the letters: SF1 JK9 or B-U-I-C-K. The other day we stood so long reading letters off a parked car I thought for sure we’d get the cops called on us. I think one of the reasons my son loves letters so much is because we have these great refrigerator magnets called Fridge Phonics. I highly recommend them. You stick a letter into the thingy and it sings a song about the letter. And since my son loves music, this was the perfect way for him to learn his letters. Like I said, he’s smart. I’ll only take partial credit for it, especially since I can’t think of any other word besides “thingy” to describe his toy.
By now it’s no secret that it took me a while to get used to being a stay at home mom. That’s putting it delicately. Putting it non-delicately would be to say that the first year of my son’s life I hated being a stay at home mom. I have to say, with the identity crisis thing, and the hormone change thing, and the new baby thing…it was a bit overwhelming. I announced at least once a week to my husband that I was going back to work. I cried. A lot. I felt like a failure, especially when I had to finally admit defeat in, gulp, breast feeding. I felt like a failure. A lot. I’d say to my husband, “I am not cut out for this. I am just not meant to be a full time mom.” It was a pretty dramatic time there for both of us.
I think I’m far enough removed from that first year to see clearly now and I think I know what it was and sometimes still is that irritates me as a modern parent. I talk a lot about pressure. It’s the pressure of parenting that can almost do you in, isn’t it? I felt like as soon as I arrived home from the hospital with my new bundle of joy I was given a very long and specific list of milestones, checkpoints, to do’s and not to do’s. By three months your baby should be doing this. By six months your baby should be eating that. By eight months your baby should be saying this. By a year, your baby should be driving and teaching English as a Second Language to Latin Americans. Every doctor’s visit my pediatrician gave me yet another list of how my baby should be developing. The Parents as Teachers representative gave me another. And of course, there’s the secret list. When you get together with other moms and you hear “My baby does this” and “My baby is already doing this.” It’s an uncontrollable urge to start comparing your child to your friends’children, especially if they are close in age.
My son is a genius. We know this. But even my perfect boy has some minor setbacks. He’s still a little mushy when he talks and might even have a slight stutter. We will have him evaluated soon. The Parents Day Out program was recommended to me as something that would help facilitate his language skills. So far it’s working out great. A couple of months ago I actually let go of my obsession with his speech development. At first I noticed some other boys his age were talking circles around him. I was sure that there is just too much knowledge inside of his big brain so he kept it all in until he learned just the right words to say exactly what he was thinking. But, in reality, I was a little jealous that other kids were speaking before my son. Like I’ve said, I am learning to let that go. I realize there are some things that no matter how hard you work on them, you just need an extra hand to help you out. This speech thing is mine.
Isn’t it funny that when you are a full time mom, your kids turn into the direct reflection of how good of a job you are doing? When I worked full time in an office I had mid-year and year-end reviews. As a mom, my kid is now a walking, talking (we'll get there), living, breathing year-end review. This checklist that made me so miserable my first year of motherhood was my “inbox” of tasks. If I missed something, or fell behind, I somehow felt like my son would suffer and I would be fired. Fired? By whom? It sounds so silly now, I know. But in my head, like many other things you might not understand, it just made sense at the time.
Here’s the thing. No one had told me “Make sure you enjoy your son while you’re doing all of this.” You’re thinking, someone had to tell you to enjoy your son? Uh, yes. Because I said it before and I’ll say it again, you give me a list of things to do and I’ll try to do everything on that dang list. I’m a doer. It’s just how I am. I like to cross things off of a list too. It’s a great feeling for us multi-taskers. The opposite is devastating. It’s a terrible feeling when you’re unable to cross things off your list. It is like getting called back into your boss’s office and being reprimanded. This will get filed permenantly under “bad mommy.” You will not get your bonus this year. You will not get promoted.
I started to truly enjoy my son and truly enjoy my job as a full time mom when I let go of the list and took some advice from my sister in law who said “I don’t follow the rules. I just have fun with my kids.” She forever changed my view of parenting. Yes, I follow rules. I’m not as rogue as my sister in law. But when I really got down to the heart of this stay at home mom thing, I realized it’s not a "job" in the traditional sense. It’s precious time that I’ll never get back of my child’s formative years. It’s watching him roll over, sit up, stand up and take his first steps. It’s hearing him say his first words. It’s showing him on his magic erase board how to spell water when he’s two and a half and it’s hearing his pre-preschool teacher tell me how special my little boy is because he knows all of his ABC’s. It’s the pride I feel when I know that it was this tremendous sacrifice on my part that fostered his development. It’s the tears that well up when I realize my son actually has manners as he begins to say please and thank you without me reminding him to do so. I look into his big blue eyes and I have so much pride, for him and for myself. I did this. I did this. Me. I never took that much pride in my old job. For the rest of my life, I have a reminder of what true love really is. It’s not a job. Not really. My son somehow managed to enjoy himself and taught me how to enjoy him. We laugh, sing sweet songs and dance. I kiss my true love every time I get close to those sweet little chubby cheeks. And nobody ever has to remind me to do it.
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