If you are a parent, sooner or later you will utter strange, even horrible, things to your children. Usually you will mean what you say. One Friday night, entering through the back door of our used-to-be-two-family flat in the city, I heard a loud crash of metal and boards, mixed in with screams from several of our eight children, then laughter, then the patter of little and not-so-little feet running upstairs. Rushing to the scene of the crime, the front room on the first floor, I found a collapsed ping-pong table, its metal legs bent and its top cracked in places and scattered over the floor.
After rushing upstairs to confront the perpetrators and elicit a confession, I heard a strange phrase, at high volume, leave my lips: “You don’t dance on the ping-pong table.” Seems three of the five kids who still live at home, along with a friend, had the boom box blaring and thought it appropriate to get on top of the ping-pong table and get down. I’m not sure how many tunes the table lasted, but finally the hollow aluminum legs buckled and the dance party crashed to a halt, just as the back door opened. Perfect timing.
There was no preparing for this in any real or imagined parenting class. Rule No. 812: “When your children go downstairs, be sure to remind them not to dance on top of the ping-pong table.”
Other parental utterances are not so much weird as rude, even mean-spirited. When our kids fight over a toy or a video game or somesuch, I’ve heard myself say—with a deranged timbre in my voice and the best maniacal glare I can muster—“If you don’t stop fighting over that video game, I’m going to take it out in the back yard, pour gasoline over it and burn it.” It works for about 30 seconds. On repeated usage, the duration of its effectiveness shrinks. But if it goes further—if, in the midst of the trench warfare that sometimes is parenting, some variation of “idiot” or “stupid” comes out to describe a child’s behavior—it ends up, as J.D. Salinger wrote in The Catcher in the Rye, with me “apologizing like a madman.” Melvin, my 8-year-old son, is relentlessly happy. This is a good thing. Sometimes, however, irrational exuberance is annoying. He wakes up that way, at 40 mph, joyfully messing with people. So one morning the question from the harried parental unit was “Melvin, why are you so damned happy all the time?” His reply: “Because I’m going to have fun today.”
So Melvin straightened me out. If you want to be happy, expect to be. It'll happen.
Our first three children were achieved through conventional means, and the last five were adopted from foster care. “Raising” the first three, two boys 15 months apart and a girl born three years later, seemed relatively trauma-freea bit like the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Not always a day at the beach but an achievable mission with few casualties. Raising the next fivefour boys and one girl, now ages 7 through 12is more like the Iraq War, our own private Fallujah. Historians may analyze how this urban room-to-room combat turned out. Opinions could vary.
Before my dire descriptions trigger skepticism, consider that my credentials include 101 years of parenting. Here’s the premise: A parent is responsible for a kid until he or she is 18. In my case, this translates into 144 years of parenting. Taking the ages of my children28, 26, 23, 12, 10, 10, 8 and 7into account, we have 43 more years of parenting ahead. Game on.
Be warned that your children will manipulate you. When our Jermaine was 4, he specialized in apologizing in public places. In front of witnesses, he’d say, with arms outstretched, “I’m sorry, Mom. I love you. Please give me a hug.” Strangers would glare at my wife; how could she be so hard-hearted? A more knowing parent once saw this act at Target and just shook his head: “He’s got you, hasn’t he?”
A few years of such stratagems, and you will come to doubt your child’s word. One morning in the mayhem that is preparing our kids for school, Jermaine insisted on wearing pajamas to school. He was told to get dressed. After repeated argument, I said, “You say it’s Pajama Day? Show me a note from your teacher.” He produced the note.
As parents with a slew of kids, sooner or
later you hear the question: “How do you do it?”
My stock answer: “We don’t.”
New parents sometimes look to an experienced hand for direction because many of them became parents without much thought or planning. For most folks, the human procreative urgeor the unintended consequence of an even stronger recreational urgewas the key factor in spawning a child. There you are, a parent. Good luck.
Once there, no matter how well things seem to be going, don’t pretend to have it figured out. None but a fool, even in his or her most private delusional moment, would ever utter or even think, “I really am a good parent. I should tell people how to do this.” Even if you have children who have aged to legal adulthood and managed to avoid drug rehab, prison and the sex-offender registry, that doesn’t mean you’re the new Dr. Spock. Giving advice based on that chance achievement is akin to telling people you have a foolproof system for playing the lottery because you just won two bucks on a scratch-off ticket. Face it: How a human being turns out is the result of a mix of genes, parents, peers, school, the economy, culture and the gravitational pull of the moon. And sun spots.
Children, like larger humans, appear to be happiest when they are doing what they want to do, when they want to do it. As a parent, you are the bad guy who must get them to do what they should do, what they need to doand you’re guessing. Pardon another bellicose metaphor, though it fits: You are the drill instructor; they’re in your boot camp. Or try thinking of yourself as the director of an off-Broadway play, and the cast in rehearsal just doesn’t get it. Cut! Cut! Do it again.
As parents with a slew of kids, sooner or later you hear the question: “How do you do it?” My stock answer: “We don’t.” This is not self-serving self-deprecation. Part of being, or striving to be, a good parent is thinking you’re doing a lousy job. You need enough self-assurance to damn the torpedoes and steam ahead, yet, if you have any sense or decency, you must realize that as a parent who cares, doubt and regret are yours forever. Legally and morally, you’re the dictator in charge. You may imagine yourself as a benevolent despot, yet your kids may be seeing the reincarnation of Josef Stalin or Marie Antoinette. It’s not an easy gig.
As a parent, what you do counts. It just doesn’t guarantee a desirable outcome. Despite the daily doubts and regrets, in the long run you won’t really doubt that you love them, and you sure as hell won’t regret having them. Bank on that.
We ended up getting another ping-pong table. The kids were told not to dance on it. Just in case, we got one with sturdier legs.
Hard-Earned Advice
- Children spell love T-I-M-E—not “quality” time, just time. Be with them, talk to them, listen to them, play with them, do nothing with themeven argue with them.
- You don’t spoil your baby by holding him too much. Do it while you can.
- Don’t beat your kids. An occasional reflex slap on the wrist or derriere isn’t the end of the world, but just remember: Violence and pain often beget more of the same.
- You will yell at your children and say mean things. It’s acceptable to apologize to them later, and it’s acceptable not to apologize and to tell them you meant what you said.
- Credit Calvin Trillin with this observation: Your kids don’t listen when you talk to them; they listen when you talk to someone else. Your behavior in front of them is much more important than your speechifying.
- You do need to talk with them. There is no such thing as small talk. Start early—any time after conception is fine. An old maxim is that the time to talk to your 16-year-old is when he or she is about 2—or sooner.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the only success is confidence. Anything you can do to give your children the feeling that they will endure, including allowing them to fail and recover, is a good idea.
- Your children are people. Don’t feel bad that you get along with each one differently. Some will need you more than others; some will be easier to like than others.
- If your children are enthusiastic about doing anything short of grave-robbing or binge drinking, run with it. If they want to build miniature frigates inside empty wine bottles, start draining the bottles.
- When in doubt, go with your gutand give your kid a hug and say, “No matter what, I love you.” They won’t get that from too many people. It’s a good feeling to have, even when it’s only a memory.
