Normal

I’m secretly a competitive parent and I hate that about myself. Actually my competitive streak is not limited to parenting, and it’s not even as secret as I’d like it to be. Anyone who has played Scattergories with me can tell you so. I guess it stems from being the youngest in a big family full of brilliant, hilarious people. If only they could be simply smart and funny, maybe I wouldn’t be constantly trying to match their wits.

My competitiveness has not gotten me anything other than worry. It has not allowed me to achieve a high-paying, “successful” career. I have won no beauty pageants. I’ve never even won a spelling bee. I tell myself I don’t care about money or physical attractiveness or rules, and for the most party I’m not lying to myself. But the real reason I’m no Warren Buffet or Carrie Prejean or Kavya Shivashankar is because in addition to being super competitive, I’m also a super slacker. I’m competitive in a lazy way. I do not compete so much as I compare and worry that I don't measure up.

I used to worry about myself all the time, but I’ve quit that for the most part since I became a parent nearly five years ago. Every now and then I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I’m exiting the bathroom to investigate the shrieking sound coming from the next room, and I’ll think, “Wow, I bet Gloria Steinem doesn’t worry about her frizzy hair as much as I do.” Or as I’m huffing down the block with two dogs attached to me with leashes and a three year old daughter attached to me with her hand, trying to get a walk in, I sometimes wish I could manage my time more like Michelle Obama so I could have her arms instead of my own. But I generally don’t have much time to take care of myself anymore, to pluck my eyebrows or shave my legs, but also to worry about not looking like I think I should look.

Lacking time to devote to my own inner insecurities, I’ve transferred my negative thoughts to my daughter’s development. I hate that. I wish I didn’t do that but I totally do. I wish I could be more like Paula Spencer, author of the excellent parenting advice book, Momfidence!, but see, there I go again, comparing myself to "better" mothers.

So when Stella was first born, I beat myself up because I succumbed to an epidural and a C-section instead of delivering her vaginally without drugs like I had wanted (because everything I read beforehand said that’s the BEST way to have a child, and of course I wanted to be the BEST.) Then, after she lost her sucking reflex due to an undiagnosed case of thrush and I got too frustrated trying to pump out ½ oz per hour of my breast milk and gave up one night and tried some formula a lactation nurse had given me when she saw how desperate I was and I saw how instantly satisfied Stella was with the thick formula and the easy flow nipple, I felt horribly guilty when we switched her from breast to bottle nearly eleven months before the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends is ideal. When she was late (according to developmental milestones I obsessively monitored) to roll over, sit up, crawl, cruise, walk, and potty train, I worried each and every time until the day after she rolled over, sat up, crawled, cruised, walked, and used the potty. And then I moved on to worrying about the next developmental milestone.

So now that she’s achieved all those developmental goals and I have nothing left to worry about regarding her physical development, I’ve suddenly started worrying about her social development. We would love to have another baby, but after numerous failed attempts and the big-40 giving up on my lazy ovaries, it seems more and more each day that Stella will be an only child, at least until we can adopt. And you know what that means don’t you? She’ll most certainly turn out to be a spoiled rotten, self-centered, incapable-of-sharing brat if I don’t intercede with the birth-order strike against her and make sure she gets some decent socialization. At least that’s what the experts say.

So I took Stella to the playground the other day to socialize her. Yes, I know I sound like a new puppy owner. Most parents take their kids to the playground to burn off some energy or because the kids love it; I take my kid to prevent her from becoming a sociopath or a hermit. I sat at a bench and enjoyed watching her play with the other kids, all the while thinking, “Oh, this is so GOOD for her.” But after about fifteen or twenty minutes, she wandered off to the side of the playground by herself. I waited a bit to see what she was doing, and then I saw her lie down in the grass. I approached her and said, “Honey bee, don’t you want to go play with your friends over there?” She said, “No, Mama. Wanna look at clouds with me?” I felt a little self-conscious in front of the other parents, but how can you resist a sweet child asking you to do such a thing, so I got down in the grass and lay next to her. We looked at the clouds for awhile, and it was wonderful, and I felt so connected to my wonderful, dreamy little girl. But then the bugs started to bother me, and I regained my proper sense of dignity, so I got up and said, “I’m gonna go back to the bench. Are you sure you don’t want to play with your friends?” She again said no, so I left her alone with her clouds.

I sat at the bench and began to worry. Why doesn’t she want to play with the other kids? Is she already becoming anti-social at age four? Should I have taken her out more when she was younger and gotten her used to being around people before now? Is it too late? Have I ruined her already?

Just then, another parent and her kid walked up to the playground. The kid immediately ran for the slides, and the mom started heading over to my bench. I cringed and thought, “Oh God, I hope this one’s not a talker. I can’t stand to chit-chat with people I don’t know. Can’t she just leave me alone?”

And then I looked across the playground, across the kids chasing each other and screaming and having fun being loud and boisterous, and I saw my sweet little dreamy girl lying there, looking at the clouds. I smiled to myself at how ridiculous I was being. Here I don’t feel sociable, so why was I worrying about my daughter feeling like doing her own thing? The other mother sat down next to me and we smiled our hellos to each other. Before she got a chance to ask me if I thought it was gonna rain tomorrow, I got up, walked back to Stella, laid back down in the grass and watched some more clouds. And I didn’t even worry if the other mother thought we were developmentally normal or not.