Letter to my children: Listening, the Parenting Manual, and Laughter
/“Okay, we are going to do this one more time.”
“NO Momma!!! I want to do this ONE more time!!” Indignation and outrage limned the Bean’s features.
“Did you listen to what I said?”
“Sorry?”
Later that same day, different child. “Let’s go to fill the tires with air and then go pick up your sister.”
“No, I want to do tires BEFORE we pick up Bean.”
“Ummm, did you hear what I said?”
“Huh?” Dragon piped up from the back seat.
I took a breath. “Excuse me, Momma, I didn’t hear you.”
“Excuse me, Momma, I didn’t hear you.” He parroted back to me.
“I asked you if you heard me.”
“About what?”
Another breath, “I told you that we were going to do tires before we pick up Bean. Your response was to yell that you want to do tires before we pick her up. Which is exactly what I told you we were going to do one second before.”
“Momma, please stop laughing about this.”
“Well, I don’t know what is going on - but both you and your sister are insisting that I am doing the opposite of what you want because you are not listening to what I am saying.”
“Yes, but stop laughing!” Indignation throbbed throughout the car.
“Dragon, my choice is to either find this amusing or to be upset you two are not paying attention to me. I could laugh or have my Cranky Monster wake up and be irritated. Which would you rather I be?”
There was a long pause.
“Laughing I guess.”
The first week that we were parents - your father and I kept on asking each other questions about Bean. “Is she hungry? Is she tired? Is she wet? Do we need to change her diaper? Is she cold? Is she hot?” on and on and ON… as the days went on and it became very clear that neither of us knew the answers to these very simple questions we landed on a trope that has served us well as parents ever since.
The next time one of us would ask one of the above questions (or millions of other ones).
The answer would be, “I don’t know darling, we left her instruction manual at the hospital.”*
“Oh, that is right, we did leave it at the hospital!”
“But, you know, that is okay. Because it was written in braille and we don’t read braille anyway.”
Laughter.
Laughter is the key to all of this. My beloveds, if you chose to have children (or not), laughter is the key. In instances where you have no idea what to do, how to respond, or what to say - being well rested enough to have a sense of humor about your novice state makes the whole experience palpable.
At least, that is what the manual written in braille tells me.
I love you both SUPER much. Super Super SUPER much.
