Gloriously Ordinary

Parenthood is said to bring many joys and immeasurable satisfaction.

I know a few people who hold this opinion, though I am not one of them.

Heartache and worry, maybe, but not so much on the satisfaction scale.

Every day when I take my daughter to school, I see parents doting on their offspring and it reminds me of David Sedaris, who I saw at the Arlington Theatre recently. In a riff on his childhood Sedaris pointed out that he was born before the creation of self-esteem, so his parents put him and his sisters to bed the old fashioned way: “Lights out, shut up. If your father hears any chatter he’ll be back with his belt.”

Contemporary parents, on the other hand, feel derelict if they fail to read a bedtime story for half an hour, then spend another twenty minutes assuring their child that he or she is special, exceptional, gifted, a living miracle and without doubt the center of the universe.

I love my kids, don’t get me wrong, but I tend to think we – my generation, I mean – act insane when it comes to our children. Take play dates, for instance, a concept that absolutely staggers me. When I was a kid – in a society that was as full of dangers and predators as our current one – we’d give our parents a general idea of where we were going and what we intended to do and with whom, and dash off, into the neighborhood, out of touch for hours. We didn’t have cell phones or GPS tracking or picture ID cards with a DNA sample embedded in them. Today our kids’ schedules are so jam-packed with wholesome, supervised activities that we must schedule time for them to play with their friends. “Can Sophia do 3:30 on Tuesday or is 4:00 on Wednesday better? Oh, she has ballet on Tuesday and gymnastics on Wednesday and chess on Friday and Advanced Mandarin on Saturday morning. Wow, when does Sophia sleep? Does she sleep?”

Once in a while, as my daughter and I are waiting for the custodian to unlock the school gate, I’ll overhear other parents, almost always mothers, talking. “Tyler’s doing exceptionally well in his GATE (Gifted and Talented) classes, and I definitely think he has a predilection for medicine. He loves science, and he’s always watching medical shows on The Learning Channel.” “You let him watch TV? We only allow Brianna to watch the Disney Channel for one hour each week – provided she executes all her homework perfectly, of course.” “Tyler will probably attend Stanford or Harvard – he’s such a bright child.” “I see Brianna at USC Film School. She’s very creative.”

I glance at Tyler, expecting to see him reading the Physician’s Desk Reference on his iPad, and instead see that he is picking his nose with reckless abandon, twisting his index finger up and in until he extracts a juicy green mass, which, after long inspection, he proceeds to wipe on his jeans. Definitely Harvard material.

Is it just me or do we put too much pressure to perform, succeed, strive and accomplish on our children? Is it acceptable for them to daydream and goof off, to occasionally stare slack-jawed at the TV or the computer, or climb a tree without parental supervision and a safety net below? Is it OK if our children don’t acquire a foreign language and proficiency on at least one musical instrument by age seven?

The other morning my daughter marched into the living room and announced that she wanted to ask a question about sex. OK, we said, let’s have it. “Can you get pregnant from kissing a mirror?” No, we explained, kissing a mirror won’t do the trick, there’s a mechanical component to it, the joining of a female’s egg with a male’s sperm... We can go into more detail if you want. “No, that’s OK, I just wanted to know about the mirrors.”

We learn later that our daughter’s classmate Elena is fond of kissing the mirror in the girl’s bathroom at school. Each to her own.

Play dates, questions about sex, neurotic parents on the school steps planning their child’s college experience ten years in advance – this is what kills the rapture for me. Childhood comes once and is all too quickly gone. My kids are gloriously ordinary, which is just fine with me.