For on-going, ever-changing, cheap home entertainment, nothing beats having children. Well, not cheap exactly. If you’re planning to have a child, you’d best be prepared to pay medical costs, daycare, the cover prices for a vast array of comprehensive parenting manuals which contain mutually-contradictory advice, pre-school testing fees, school enrollment fees, school picture fees, school picture retake fees because the first set of pictures make your child look like a member of the marsupial family, fashionably-ripped clothes, new fashionably-ripped clothes because the old ones aren’t fashionably-ripped enough, driving lessons, a new car to replace the one which was tragically lost at sea during the driving lessons, car insurance against the next unforeseen disaster, orthodontia, eye wear, personal technology, SAT study guides, ACT study guides, study guides for re-taking the SAT and the ACT, professional tutoring for the SAT and ACT, bribes to get college admissions officers to look the other way when they see the SAT and ACT scores, college tuition, college graduation costs, and a parental subsidy for the first post-college year as your offspring try to establish themselves. All things considered, the cost of raising a child to productive adulthood is comparable to the cost of the average space shuttle mission, but with far less chance of being featured on the national news. (Although, in an interesting coincidence, if you do have children it’s a good bet that just like the astronauts, they will lose one-hundred-thousand dollars worth of tools before they move out.)
Despite the cost, children can be endlessly entertaining. They change from day to day, like growing bamboo or advice from the Secretary of the Treasury. Parental techniques that worked yesterday won’t work today and anything that worked on the first child will be completely wrong for any others you might have. No matter what you do, you’ll screw it up. If you don’t want to feel like an utter failure in the child rearing department, there’s only one thing to do — come up with a convincing rationalization. My personal favorite is, “Oh, that’s just a phase he’s going through.”
No matter what my sons did, I attributed it to “a phase” they were going through. Fussing at bedtime? Just a phase. Endlessly asking why? Just a phase. Wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on their back? Just a phase.
The parenting literature backs me up on this. All parenting books talk glowingly about the various developmental stages (the polite synonym for “phases”) that your child will experience on his or her wondrous journey to maturity. These books imbue every stage — first steps, first date, first tattoo and body piercing — with a sense of joy and wonder as if every event is an extension of the rapturous joy of the childbirth experience.
(Aside: the phrase “rapturous joy” is how I describe childbirth. My wife — who claims to have a more valid opinion because she was closer to the action so to speak — uses other words. She admits it was a miracle, but insists that it was a miracle that was significantly enhanced through the magical properties of the epidural. She further argues that any experience which involves that much screaming — mostly from me — cannot be accurately described as “joyful”.)
In any case, books on child development bear about as much resemblance to the actual parenting experience as travel books bear to your actual vacation.
Really.
Pick up any travel book and the author — who probably does the actual writing in a fashionable New York coffee shop — will wax poetic about the delights to be found in some distant place like Salzburg, Austria. For example, a typically lyrical passage might say:
The Pension Grillparzer is a quaint, quiet little hotel tucked in a charmingly old-world neighborhood far from the hustle and bustle of downtown. Delightful antique fixtures adorn the communal bathing facilities conveniently located near the stairs on each of the building’s four floors. Original lath-and-plaster walls add to the charm and transport guests back to the days of Mozart.
In plain English this means it’s a dump with four bathrooms for one hundred guests, cold-and-cold running water, no elevators, crumbling walls, and an address on the bad side of town.
This might be considered a gross misrepresentation if the author had actually visited the hotel. Instead, he conducted extensive research in the form of reading previously-written travel guides which in turn were written by authors who read other travel guides…all the way back to the only author who ever really paid a visit to the hotel when it was new and quaint.
Similarly, books on child raising are based on the books that came before them. Literary historians are working hard to identify the original, proto-book.
The proof of this comes from the fact that the books all identify the stages the same way; by the age of the child. The first twelve chapters detail the month-by-month changes you can expect. Each chapter has a convenient checklist you can use to verify that your child is developing normally. At the end of chapter one (“The First Month”) your child should be holding his head up, showing an interest in the world around him, and narrowing his choice of college majors to two or three prime candidates. What if your child only accomplishes two of these things? Does that mean he got a sixty-six percent and will be labeled as a ‘D’ student for the rest of his life? Will he be held back and have to repeat The First Month until he gets it right? What if he attempts the more complicated developmental tasks in chapter two (sitting up and rushing a fraternity) before he’s ready?
The trick is to relax and remember that the stages are just your convenient excuse. Whatever your child is doing, just tell people “it’s a phase he’s going through”.
