Slap That Mom

Don't slap me because
I'm patronizing.

As you know, I'm the first one to get all pissed off about champion mompetitors.


The ones who want to give you advice, while making sure to very heavily imply that you are an idiot.  The ones who want you to know that they are more together than you because they have on make-up/a nice outfit/hair that doesn't look like something from a Judy Blume novel.  The ones who want you to know that your child's clothing/hair (Oh yes, she did)/ behavior/skills/intellect are no match for those of her kid.


And perhaps the worst ones of all, are those who have been there before, patronizing a new mother's  concerns.


I hate those bitches.


So how was it that I found myself doing just that -- being THAT MOM?  Exactly the kind I'd like to give a Dynasty slap?


A colleague of mine, who is due in several weeks, asked a few of us veteran moms about organic crib mattresses.  Mind you that when I was shopping for Mr. R's crib mattress, I agonized over the same thing.  The thought of him breathing in god-knows-what made in some factory with the safety standards of an electric chair gave me the shakes.


We wound up settling on something in between, i.e. neither made of cancerous-upon-inhale poisons nor made of the pulp of the boola-boola tree from the deepest rainforest.


However, in a tone dripping with a cocktail of sympathy and condescension, I answered with, "Oh, you don't need an organic mattress!  Our homes are just loaded with toxins anyway!  We did got one with soy, I think. I don't think it makes much difference."


I know I just lost any chance of getting my "green" card then.  And I'm not even sure I believe that it doesn't make much difference.


What was wrong with me?  Was I trying to poo-poo her concerns, or was I trying to give her some perspective -- a reality check?  After all, I did have tons of friends whose kids sleep on run of the mill mattresses, i.e mattresses that did not cost as much as an Ipad, and the kids are fine.  There is so much to worry about, literally an endless barrage of concerns, that, once purchased, your kid's mattress usually comes out way low on the list.


But when you're pregnant, and you are just getting going on the Worry Superhighway, it's up there.


Even if we mean well, at some time we have all been that mom who deserves a slap.  Although, as we all know, hands are not for hitting.  Maybe we just need to give that mom a sign.  Something besides the finger.

Bitch, Please!

Because I never met an act of procrastination I didn’t like, I was scanning the YAHOO! news before getting to my mail.  The singer Shakira was attacked by a sea lion.  Oh, dear.  Then I saw something that really piqued my interest.  A mommy list. 

“10 Signs You’re a Type-A Mom” by Emily Liebert for GalTime. http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/10-signs-youre-type-mom-140900722.html

Click.

Within two lines I was in Ralph Macchio’s Karate Kid stance, where though hobbled he’s balanced on one leg, the other in a high front parallel attitude (pardon the dance lingo) ready to kick, his arms over his head like an angry Count Chocula.

Another mompetition I’d entered unwittingly. And this lady had me beat!  Her kids were 10 months apart, by virtue of adoption and then good luck.  And I thought I had it tough with kids 18 months apart!  She presented herself as a parenting expert who kept company with other perfect mothers, wives and authors. Well, you go on with your bad self, grrrrl!  From what I could see in the ten points listed, this chick was insanely organized, an adept multi-tasker and was on a daily basis well-coiffed, well-groomed, and fashionable. 

At first I thought she was being a little tongue-in-cheek. No.  She was SERIOUS! But then I thought about it.  Instead of enviable, her boasts were sad and scary.  The precursors to misery. 

Simply put, to need that kind of control over everything and everyone, a gal’s gotta be wound up a little tight.  Those La Perla panties must be more snug than an effing tourniquet -- enough to make an upper class Supermom bust a cap in someone’s a--. 

I mean not wanting to have your kid have a goody bag?  Really?  Those little simple surprises are so special to kids.  Enough to make their day. Sure it’s stuff I probably wouldn’t buy for them.  Sure they don’t need it.  If something’s is unsafe you can get rid of it.

And for the record, thank you very much, I am the mom who put the pencils in the Valentine’s goody bags for my 3 year old son’s class.   And here I thought I was being good by not providing candy!

Those who can get and keep their kids on a perfect schedule, doing the same thing at the same time daily, are amazing.  More power to them.  But as I mentioned in my first post on the subject of mompetition  (http://www.momsnewstage.com/2012/01/dancer-in-mompetition.html) these people need to realize that they are lucky to have docile kids!  A household of small children is not the military.  While that might be the pinnacle of orderliness for a family, it’s also soulless and insensitive. Invariably, something runs late, someone has pooped, someone’s rhythm is off.  With no sense of time, kids dawdle.  And lest you squash like a cockroach their innate sense of “smelling the roses,” sometimes they should be allowed to do so. The essence of motherhood is flexibility. 

A tree that doesn’t bend breaks.

Then I read the “all you have to do is a little light reading and follow the rules.” My stance went from Karate Kid to that scary guy in Deliverance with a crossbow.  I could have got my kids to sleep by reading books?  What a brilliant idea!  Wish someone had told me about that one!

News flash, lady. Children are not DVD players.  There is not a one-size-fits-all manual.  I tried everything in every book.  My kids began to sleep only after 6 months after crying it out.  Your child’s great early-sleeping habits don’t make you perfect. 

And yes, everyone wants her husband to get it.  Lord knows I do.  I really, really do.  There are days I’d gladly pull out my eyes to get him to do things my way. But he’s not a dog and I can’t train him.  We try to talk amicably about what we’d like from each other.  We push each others’ buttons.  But we know we’re both great parents, doing our best with very little time.  My J thinks I tear him up in this blog.  He needs to see post so he’ll know that other dads have it way, way worse, and that his disheveled little wifey is both enlightened and a kitten compared to some.

So apparently, type-A Mommy’s home looks like the vision of  HGTV’s Genevieve Gorder.  Many rooms in my house look like they were designed by Charlie Brown’s friend Pigpen.  When A-Mom multitasks it results in a symphony (although I’ve got to say that “emptying the dishwasher, changing a poopy diaper and working your I-phone” is "Ooooooh-I-just-love-amoebic-dysentery" gross!), while I burn dinner and have a child fall off a chair.

Now here’s the thing – why should anyone actually believe that their ability to multitask, get a mani-pedi, put things in those nifty Container Store plastic bins, and order others around makes them a better mother?  Those things are part of mothering, sure, but they pertain to managing a household and taking care of oneself.

Perfect parenting is something else altogether.

To be that so-called perfect parent I’d like to hear how you never yell at your kids.  How you consistently employ a firm, yet sensitive strategy to counter undesirable behavior.  How you have an arsenal of crafts ready for a rainy day. How you allow for spontaneity and curiosity and extreme dilly-dallying. How you’ve figured out a way to let your kids help you make dinner, without dinner taking 2 hours to make.  How you put your kids to bed lovingly, without wanting it to take no more than 3.8 seconds. 

How you don’t need a stiff drink at the end of everyday.

Things like that.

As for the other stuff, if that’s winning the mompetition, if that’s being perfect, then bring on the bungling.  I’m happy to have lost.

  

A Dancer In the Mompetition

I have spent my life as a dancer and dance teacher.  I’ve been to auditions with over 200 people, and I’ve been cut immediately, as well as been hired.  I have been in large classes have been both corrected harshly and asked to show something because I was pretty dang fierce.  I’ve been both intimidating and intimidated.  

And like most women, I know how underhanded and psychologically cruel our fair sex can be – in and out of the dance world.

So, you would think that with all this experience with competition (and the desire to go gently into parenting), I’d be fine with this mompetition stuff.

Nope.  It gets me every time.

Maybe it’s because, when I’m with my kids I feel like all parents should be BFFs. It’s like I’ve swallowed a whole bottle of extra-strength Kumbaya.

Take my latest.  I was with Aria at Trader Joe’s.  The store was distributing free samples of a green vegetable juice.  Aria had 4 one-ounce sample cups and would have climbed in the fountain had I let her. I talked to the sample lady about how we used to give Riley the Naked or Odwalla brand of the stuff, which we nicknamed Froggie Juice.  Containing spinach and broccoli, it seemed like a great way to get veggies in a one year old, who otherwise might only eat green in the form of a crayon. 

A mom happened by with her son.  She had a taste and then looked at the bottle.  “Oh! It has so much sugar!” she tut-tutted.

I immediately became defensive, even though I saw on the bottle that it did have a lot of sugar, as juice generally does.  “You can cut it with half water.  That’s what we do with juice.”

“Oh, well, my pediatrician says that juice is not necessary,” she continued. 

Well, I’ll be!  My doctor dun tole me that if it wuzn’t still movin’ or stinkin’ it was good eatin’!

This is what I wished I’d said.

For some stupid reason I tried to defend my watered-down-juice drinking kids by going into their very low weight percentiles and their hatred of milk.  Then it was on.  She countered with her son’s potential ability to drink loads of milk and high metabolism.

Where at first I had wanted to give her a card for my blog, at that point, I wanted slap her like I was a pimp and she was a stealin’ ho.  But leaving Trader Joe’s in a squad car would merely have proved her point that she was by far the better mother.

And, really, that was all it was.  A female pissing contest about who, according to all the literature and expert advice out there, was doing the best by her child.  When the mompetition starts, it is hard to realize that you’re a good mother because you are meeting the confluence of your child’s needs and wants.  Every child is different.  And every family has to put the EFF THIS stamp on some “rule” at some point. 

So, then what’s all this mompetition stuff all about anyway? Christina Simon, blogger at Beyond the Brochure in her article “When Moms Verbally Attack Each Other We All Lose” http://www.mamapedia.com/voices/when-moms-verbally-attack-each-other-we-all-lose, discusses moms on the offense and low mom-esteem.  While I do think that attack is too strong a word, I completely agree with the low mom-esteem.

The low mom-esteem is a result of profound self-doubt.  After all, is there any more important project? Many women have been, or continue to be, highly competitive in their field of choice.  They once were in control of whole departments, classes of students, themselves as artists and now they are defeated by getting a small person to eat peas and put away a puzzle.  It’s a mind-boggling change, one that can sap the will to even try to leave the house. 

Furthermore moms sometimes feel as though there is nothing left for themselves anymore.  Their wardrobe, body, career,  hobbies, t social life, marriage/partnership – all a shambles.  The kid(s) took everything. 

Which means that this kid better be damned AMAZING.  Or at least as good as the next mom’s. The idea that a child the identical age of our own can walk/speak in full sentences/is potty-trained/knows the alphabet/can count up to a hundred can make some us panic a little, wondering if our child will be the one child left behind.

So with a stranger, because she wouldn’t dare do it with a friend, an insecure mom seizes on something exemplary in her parenting life and goes right for the carb-loving/TV watching jugular.

Then there is the commiseration (or mommiseration, I might say) factor.  A new mom hasn’t slept in months.  She feels like the universe is using her as a punching bag.  She longs to chat with another mother who knows exactly what she’s going through. 

Unfortunately, she confides in some lady who has no idea what she’s talking about.  Her baby slept six hours a night from the time she brought him home from the hospital.  It is all poor Sleepy Samantha can do not to weep openly, if not wrap her hands around this chick’s neck.  She feels horrible, wondering what she is doing wrong, and the other lady (who is cautiously stepping away from her because of the Hannibal Lechteresque glint in her eye) feels crazy lucky that she has gotten some sleep. 

Not competition, really, but many parental discussions wind up with one person feeling cursed and the other feeling extremely blessed, if not smug.  All over something that pretty much boils down to luck.  It can feel like if not competition, then insensitivity to the one who hasn’t been so fortunate.

Also, there’s negative mompetition.  Maybe Sleepy Sam finally meets another who has likewise been barred from the Land of Nod.  Except, this woman, instead of feeling that she’s met someone from the same tribe, says, “Every three hours? Ha! Since birth my baby has woken up every hour and a half, and stays up for another hour and a half.  I’d kill to be as rested as you!”

What is the point of this?  What is the honor in being crowned “World’s Tiredest Mom”?  This broad is a freakazoid.

But maybe freakazoid lady is merely the far end of the spectrum.  For so many moms, the day often feels like a losing battle.  So desperate to win at something, it feels good to be the most martyred, to win at losing.

Yikes! That was negative.

On that note, I think I should go. I have to put my 20 month old on the potty, coach her counting in English, Spanish and Mandarin and work on her pointe.