Interestingly enough, the other parents who I have chosen to spend most of my time with are not quite so permissive.  Most of the time we can see eye to eye.  It’s not so hard when we’re outdoors (It’s not like I let my son run in the street or anything), but when we’re in one of our homes, it can be a bit more tricky.  Do I tell my son that it’s okay to bang or climb the furniture or walk around with spatula in hand and bucket on head in our home but not in others?  You bet.  Do I spend a lot of time deflecting what is perceived as “bad behavior?”  You bet.  Is it worth it?  You bet.  Do I think that my son gets it now?  If he did, he’d be a truly astounding 18-month old.  But, I live with the hope that my consistent inconsistency will make sense to him in the future.  Let’s not forget that one of the best principles that we can teach our children, and for that matter, live by ourselves, is respect for others’ ideas and practices.  It is not easy to tell our children no, especially when we secretly think they are right, but it is important to do so when they are violating another household’s rules.  I have the task of teaching my son that he will experience many different sets of rules and that part of functioning in society is understanding when and how to act in different situations.

I remember from my own childhood having to grapple with the same inconsistencies and carrying around resentment for the conflicting rules.  My parents were not so much about the “why,” but more about the “do.”   I am thankful that my son is growing up in an era where explaining things to your child is looked upon as a matter of course.  I will, unlike my own parents, carefully explain why certain behavior is correct in different situations, instead of telling him, “That’s just how it is.”  But I firmly believe that in the end I will, like my parents before me, successfully instill (with a few embarrassing moments for all, of course) the necessary understanding of social graces and respect for others that will get him labeled “such a good child.”  After all, we do not live just in our own homes, but ever increasingly as citizens of “the world.”  Let us equip our children to do the same—but maybe still also get the thrill of throwing the football in the house with Dad on a fun Sunday morning.

-An “Underprotective”  NYC Parent

If you’ve had occasion to muddle through the early stages of speech development with a child of your own, or even a niece, cousin, or friend’s child, you’re very familiar with that frustrating moment when you know that they are earnestly talking to you, but you have no idea what they are saying.  “Throw me a bone, here, kid.  At least give me one word clearly!”

It’s all very cute, of course; how else would we ever get to have “hawk-dahs” and “noonoos” for lunch, or end up with nicknames like “Cashy?”  The grinding of the gears occurs when we are working with these little people in genuine partnership but the rope-bridge they’re extending across the chasm of communication just doesn’t quite reach this side.

Haven’t you made eye contact with a toddler who sincerely tells you, “Goby junkinow mizhou” and then expects you to respond, or to do something?

“Uh, get the cabinet tissue?”

The worst is when they nod, emphatically, when you repeat back something ridiculous.  “Go buy junk, now I miss you?”

“Mm-Hmm!”  You figured it out . . . great.

The important thing to remember is that like every other learning process, repetition is paramount in language acquisition.  Trying though it may be, especially when emotions are running high or time is of the essence, we have to slow ourselves down and encourage our smallest children to express themselves verbally.  It comes in stages – from vocalization of sounds to words to sentences to treatises on your parental inadequacies.   Throughout, we must affirm their attempts to communicate and try to understand what is being said.  When we succeed (albeit infrequently at first), we can model it back correctly.

No matter what, we can reinforce the value of what they are offering.  That way, they learn to speak and develop a voice.  When you respond to your little cherub like what he is saying matters, he not only learns to speak, but also to speak up and be heard.  Now that’s a lesson worth repeating.

I had another stare-down with a street-boss.  I was letting my daughters walk on the icy snow piles along the curb as we made our way to the park for sledding, and a friendly, neighborhood Volunteer Parenting Advisor stopped us for a moment.  You know who I mean; one of those generous souls that come up to us on the street and grace us with unsolicited pearls of parenting wisdom.

She approached with the friendly, open body language that says “I want to tell these children how cute they are.”  She said something indecipherable to the girls with a smile on her wrinkled face.  They smiled back with their best “I have no idea what you said, but, yes, we are quite cute – bye now” expressions.  Then she turned her frosty glare on me and I realized she was going to zap me.  She asked me if the sleds I was carrying were for the girls. A deer in headlights, I replied that they were, at which point her evidence collecting phase concluded and I stood guilty, guilty, guilty before the judge.  Those girls should not be walking on the ice; they will slip and fall.  They should not be going sledding; it is too cold out.  Besides, they will fall and get hurt.

I proceeded to explain that when they walk on the ice, they LEARN to walk on ice, and when they fall down, they LEARN to fall down.  The sidewalk-boss would hear none of it.  It was too late.  The layers of purple and pink bundling up the girls against cold and contusion counted for naught.  Their joy was irrelevant.  I was a bad father, and a bad man.  Additionally, I was now an angry, flustered man, trying to defend his parenting style to someone who stopped assimilating new information in 1963.

Volunteer Parenting Advisors have taught me many things.  For instance, I had no idea that my child may not curiously open the freezer door at the grocery store, my preschooler may not come naked to the front door to see with whom I am speaking, my child may not walk ahead of me on the sidewalk, my child may not go out on a cool day without a winter coat, my child may not go out on a wet day without a raincoat, my child may not climb on the playground equipment at the park, my child may not stand up holding the bar on public transportation, my child may not eat something that has touched a floor or the ground, my child may not speak during an hour and a half long worship service, my child may not run outdoors, my child may not run indoors, and many other may-nots.

Maybe the reason the Volunteer Parenting Advisors stop us is that they just want to antagonize us and experience a little sadistic glee.  I could sense her quietly laughing at me as she turned her back and left me with my shattered parenting reverie, and I called out my last desperate attempt to equalize our footing: “If I wanted your help, I’d ask for it!”  Feh.  Too little, too late.  I lose and she wins, taking the spoils of my pleasant family moment with her down the street, like a head in a sack.  She stopped to chat respectfully with another septuagenarian just down the block, leaving me brainstorming better comebacks as I snapped at my kids to get a move on.

Walking with my kids to the snowy park, I thought a bit more about the street-boss’s perspective, and her motivations.  As hard as it is to remember in the moment, her warnings and disapprovals are not about my parenting, or about my children.  They are about the fear and sense of powerlessness in which the sidewalk-boss stews.  I realized that merely by parenting at all I was stepping on her toes.  My very existence as an involved young parent, let alone a father, is a threat to her; I’m a rival, an upstart.  Maybe parenting was the one thing she considered her expertise.  She can’t outrun me; never could.  She can’t outlift me; never could.  She would never have gotten a shot at an executive position in her day.  And here I am taking this job from her as well—and doing it all wrong, wrong, wrong to boot.

So the next time I stare into the eyes of some aging Volunteer Parenting Advisor, I may have a little more compassion.  I may grant her the expert status she is claiming.  I may even heed her advice . . . at least until she is out of sight.