BUT WHY? The 6 parental behaviours that baffle non-parents.

By MIA FREEDMAN

Oh how I laughed. Actually out loud. I was reading an opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday called A Childless Bystander’s Baffled Hymn by a guy called Frank Bruni who has a dozen nieces and nephews, assorted god-children but no kids of his own yet.

And he’s confused.

And no wonder. There are some things about parenting that make absolutely no sense from the outside. I know this because I was once on the outside with Frank, shaking my head, rolling my eyes and making those circular motions with one finger pointing at my temple.

Those parents be crazy.

Now I’m a parent, I do so many baffling things that seem utterly reasonable and normal. To me.

Like counting to……well, something. “Don’t make me count!” I’ll threaten my children.

These days they barely react, having wised up long ago to the fact that counting is not very scary. WHO KNEW.

I’m not sure where I learned that counting was an effective disciplinary tool. They didn’t teach it to me in those birth classes where all I can remember is having to split into groups with crayons and butcher’s paper so we could write down the economic, social, physical and mental benefits of breastfeeding. My husband had to be restrained from sticking the crayon in his eye just for something interesting to do.

Anyway, counting. Mostly futile. But idle threats are really the only thing standing between most parents and total anarchy – or so we believe.

There are so many, many baffling things parents do and in truth, we’ve forgotten why they ever seemed like a good idea in the first place. But let’s summarise the 6 main parental behaviours ones baffling Franki Bruni:

1. The word ‘last’.

Bruni writes: “Usually it means final. Last exit: there are none beyond it. Last rites: you’re toast. But the “last chance” for a 4-year-old to quit his screeching, lest he get a timeout? There are usually another seven or eight chances still to go, in a string of flaccid ultimatums: “Now this is your last chance.” “This is really your last chance.” “I’m giving you just one more chance. I’m not kidding.””

Be careful or I’ll start counting. You’ve been warned.

I am so guilty of this. I give my kids choices constantly. Why do I do this? I have confused parenting with multiple choice.

This is the bit where Frank Bruni made me laugh:

“What would you like to wear?”— and all the negotiating and the painstakingly calibrated diplomacy? They’re toddlers, not Pakistan.”

Oh but Frank, I cannot tell you the times I have wished for UN intervention. Or sanctions.

3.  Why so much angst?

Bruni calls it “the boundless fretting” which is such a great description. I have a newly pregnant friend who told me she’ll stop worrying when she gets to 12 weeks. “No you won’t,” I told her. “You won’t stop worrying ever. EV-ER. Worrying is your new default emotion. Get used to it. Wine helps. Oh wait, you can’t have any.”

4. When did parenting become a verb?

Our parents didn’t parent. They just had kids and got on with it. People without kids are often baffled by how hard we make it sound. Why do we have so many books? Why do people write blogs and visit forums and do courses and get into fights on Twitter with strangers about the relative merits of feeding your kid gluten? The short answer is that we’re all nervous about the parenting choices we’ve made and need to defend them, occasionally by talking down the choices of others. It’s not pretty but it happens.

5. Why the constant food fights?

Yes, parents can be pretty obsessed with what goes into our kids’ mouths. And, more worryingly, what doesn’t. Hello FRUIT AND VEGETABLES AND PROTEIN AND ANYTHING WITH A MODICUM OF NUTRITIONAL VALUE.  Yet again, this came as a surprise to me because I thought I’d be cool and let my kids eat white bread with Coco Pops on top. For dinner. But no. I am forever warning my kids that they’ll get scurvy IF THEY DO NOT CONSUME SOMETHING THAT ISN’T MADE OF BREAD OR SUGAR OR JUICE.

Bruni points out quite reasonably: “Explain to me what’s gained by the voluminous discussions, within earshot of little Edwin or Edwina, of what he or she probably won’t eat or definitely won’t eat or must somehow be made to eat, perhaps with a bribe. It has become a power struggle: the parents’ wishes versus the child’s defiance. And the battle seems to end one and only one way. With chicken fingers.”

I am constantly telling my kids how clever they are. And pretty. And handsome. And talented. And KIND. “You are SO KIND.” I say. Partly I say it because I think it’s true and partly because I want them to think it. Yes, I do want them to have a high self-esteem. But why? Maybe to immunise them against the crippling self doubt society encourages as they head towards adolescence and beyond. Gah.

Bruni cautions: “There’s a line between filling a kid with self-esteem and larding a kid with delusions, just as there’s a line between making your children feel that they’re the center of your universe, which they most definitely should be, and making them feel that they’re the center of the universe, which only Honey Boo Boo is.”

Truer words never said.

He goes on to wonder about why parents tie themselves in knots and sweat buckets over what he views as the small stuff. All the kids of his friends and siblings are basically the same at 13 as they were at 4, regardless of the way they were parented, he insists….

“Some of them were held to early bedtimes and some weren’t. Some had their own computers and some shared. Some had nannies and some didn’t. Some of their parents were yellers, and some of their parents were brooders. All of them ate too many chicken fingers.

And while they were indeed coaxed toward better or worse etiquette and cleaner or sloppier rooms, they weren’t, generally speaking, transformed. What had always been wonderful about them remained so. What was difficult did, too.”

So is he right? Do parents spend too much time believing we have the ability to change our kids instead of just getting on with it and saving ourselves 100 shades of angst?

And if you don’t have kids, does this ring true for you?

What else don’t you get about parents?