The Eye of the Tiger

Yesterday I told a friend of mine how in just one weekend we’ve completely done away with the binkies in our household.  You heard me.  The battle of the binky is officially over with yours truly as the victor.  Cue the confetti and the balloons.

While babysitting at another friend’s house, my son was forced to nap without his precious b-word (what we’re calling it now in our house, a word that’s strictly forbidden to be said out loud as to not give it any power).  It took a good forty-five minutes for him to fall asleep on their couch, mostly because he wasn’t tired, but he did eventually fall asleep.  Sitting in a chair across from him as he dozed off, I had a great revelation and thought to myself, why you little faker. You don’t need the binky to fall asleep!  I knew in that moment that I had stumbled onto something big and I wanted to keep the momentum going.  I had to try it again.  That night I put him to bed with no binky.  It was a complete success. And here’s the really strange part, he didn’t even ask for it.  Again, I thought, you little faker.  It was all the evidence I needed to do away with, once and for all, my son’s need for oral pacification.  Do you know it’s been four days and he and I both have survived without a binky?  Do you also know that he still hasn’t asked for it, not even once?   I feel like the underdog from the streets, the Italian Stallion, the great Balboa who just hit a TKO against that dreadful binky, the Mr. T a.k.a. Clubber Lang of enemies.  I’m ready for the big fight now.  The big time, baby.  I’m ready to go the distance.  I’m ready for (dun dun dun!) the Russian.  In other words, I’m so confident now that I’m ready to take on my next big opponent, the Big Boy Potty.  I’m ready for my very own potty training montage which includes going to the store to pick out stickers, big boy underwear and M&M’s.  I can do this.  I am as the song says “risin’ up to the challenge of our rival.”  With all the strength I never knew I had, I can run up those metaphoric steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, a mere 72 steps away from the Title.  I’m so close, I can taste it.  Eww, okay, I don’t really want to “taste” the victory of potty training.  I take that back.

My friend was so impressed with me that she responded, “Pretty soon you’ll be the one giving out advice.”  It stopped me in my tracks.  Now, I can’t fully take credit for the binky thing.  A good friend of mine told me that it just took one time for her daughter not to sleep with a binky and that was it.  She threw them all away.  So I took her idea, ran with it and made it my own.  Still, I can’t help but fantasize about how cool it would be if I actually came all this way as a parent and if I, a no-name kid from the poor streets of Maplewood, could actually qualify to give out parenting advice.  I still think I have way too much to learn to ever be taken seriously as a voice of authority.  I will, however, take this opportunity to give my best overall explanation as to why, for once, something I set out to do actually worked.  Take it as “advice” if you so choose.  I forgot to pack a binky for the naptime that I knew would take place over at my friend’s house.  So it was by accident that my son slept without it.  It just happened.  That part of it was out of my control.  But then, I saw an opportunity for growth and I seized it.  I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil lately.  

I can only pinpoint one other time in which I’ve seized the moment as it so blatantly presented itself.  It was after I bought Fridge Phonics for my son.  He became obsessed with the magnetic letters.  So I bought more alphabet toys and the more we played with them everyday the more he wanted to learn.  Then we started making games out of finding letters at random.  Before I knew it, he had learned his ABC’s in and out of order.  He is not yet three years old and can spell almost twenty words (increasing every day.)  People have asked me if I’m the spelling Nazi, if I drill him all the time or if I smack his knuckles with a ruler when he misspells a word.  That would be a no, no and heck no.  The only explanation I can offer is that when I recognized his desire to learn letters, I ran with it.  That’s why he knows how to spell “yellow” and “princess.”  That’s why just last night he added “e” and “v” to the letters he can actually write on paper with a pen.  (And thankfully, not on the couch.)  I saw that he loved letters so I surrounded him with them.  Again, I only take partial credit because he’s the one that started the whole thing.  Partial credit is better than none though, so I’ll humbly accept it.

A friend of mine who is having her first baby recently sent out an email asking all of her friends to give out their most sincere parenting advice.  She wanted to know everything, what diapers to use, what bottles to buy, what songs to sing to her child for sleepy time and what she should do if the baby won’t sleep.  I thought a lot about what she was asking of us.  I’ve asked those same questions myself when I was pregnant and preparing for my bundle of joy.  Thinking back to when I registered for my baby shower, I had no idea what to get or not to get.  I asked for friends’ advice too.  I even emailed a couple of my superstar mom friends.  And the truth is, because of them I registered for things I’ve never had to use and left off the list things I should have added.  But they are not to blame.  They couldn’t have known that my son would be too fat to fit into a Bumbo seat, or that he would break out when I used cocoa butter on him.  The fact is, no two kids are alike.  What one parent thinks is essential the next thinks inconsequential.  A new parent fumbles around in the dark and calls out to the voices of others for guidance.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as that new parent knows that she too has an intuitive voice that might get lost in the noise of others if she's not careful.  I asked for advice and help at every turn and milestone and, guess what, I still do sometimes, notwithstanding the unsolicited advice, of course.  Some of it’s good and some bad.  In other words, you have to weed through the briars to get to the fruit.  Or something like that.

That’s when I realized, I really have nothing of substance to offer this new mom-to-be.  I almost did the most pretentious of all self-serving acts and said, “Read my blog.  I now know how to get kids off the binky.”  But I resisted that urge.  I do have my own stories, my field research, but none of it qualifies me to tell her what to do in her specific situations. That’s something she’s going to have to figure out on her own, just like I did.  The truth is, I feel extremely unqualified to give advice. All the internet articles, the books, the magazines and friends’ advice didn't help me at 3 in the morning, comforting a colicky baby.  So I thought about an honest answer to her question, what would really help, what I would like to hear another parent say to me, and after much deliberation, I emailed back my response. “My best advice is this, no matter what happens, don’t be hard on yourself.  Remember that everyone deals with the exact same thing you do and you’ll be fine.  Say it over and over again until you feel it’s true.  Say, ‘I’ll be fine.’”  And that was my best parenting advice. 

She wrote back the next day.  “That’s great Carrie, but what diapers do you use?”