There’s really not much that can prepare you for parenting. All of the parenting classes, books, and advice in the world can’t really get you ready for the actuality of having your own little infant to care for. Though most of my daughter’s birth is now a blur, I strongly remember talking to the nurse when it was time to check out of the hospital and reading through the paperwork line by line, asking questions like, “Wait, how many times a week am I supposed to bathe her?” and “How do I know when she’s hungry?” My husband made some joke about how our infant car seat came with a manual, and why didn’t the baby? At the time it wasn’t very funny. Wishful thinking, perhaps.
The thing about parenting is that it’s hard work, it’s not always fulfilling, and you rarely really know what you’re doing.
I had one of those moments last summer. It was blazingly hot–the kind of heat that makes your shoes feel like they’re melting to the sidewalk. My 2-year-old son and I had just met my cousin for lunch at a local restaurant. As we had just moved to Boston from New York, we were used to walking everywhere and had made the mistake of walking through the heat to get to lunch–and now we had to get home. Which none of us wanted to do of course. It was just too hot.
My son decided that he couldn’t handle the heat. He didn’t want to walk, or go in his stroller. Screaming, it seemed, was a better choice. So scream he did. A lot. I believe it sounded quite like, “No no no no no no no no NO!” Eventually I got him to sit down, that is until we stopped in at a Starbucks on the way home. It was blissfully air-conditioned and my cousin had the brilliant idea of getting my son a cup of ice water with a green straw. Which normally would be incredibly exciting, but in this moment of overheated tantruming, the five-minute wait at Starbucks was just too much.
So he cried and cried. And I didn’t know quite what to do with this monster in the stroller. So I took him out, put him on my lap, and repeated over and over again, “When you calm down we can talk about it. When you calm down we can talk about it.” Eventually, he calmed down. And we talked about it. He was hot and tired. And he wanted to be carried, not to go in the stroller. So we made a deal–I would hold him until his water came, and then he would go in the stroller for a little while. And that’s what happened.
As I was throwing something away, a Starbucks employee came up to me. He was probably in his mid-twenties, and he said to me, “You did a good job with him–that was great.” And I about burst into tears as I mumbled a “thanks so much” and ran out the door. Because it had been a hard parenting moment. Public tantruming is the worst. And I felt so lucky that I’d gotten my son to calm down and figured out what he needed…and then to have someone tell me that I did a good job? It was like a shot of adrenaline–it was so validating. I’m sure that guy at Starbucks sees plenty of kids having tantrums (and probably from caffeine-hungry adults too!) But the fact that he noticed that I was doing something good, and then told me–that was powerful.
A while back I read a beautiful blog post by Tamara Reese about the importance of validating other parents. That when we see good parenting, we should tell them. Because truly, it takes a village to raise a child. It takes so much support to get through those early days, those 2-year-old tantrums, the 6-year-olds rolling their eyes, the talking back from the 9-year-olds… and yes, I hear it gets worse (and better) over the years. Being told that you’re a good mama is one of those things that helps you keep going through the tough times.
That guy at Starbucks, with a few choice words, turned my day from hell into a really good day–because not only did I conquer the tantrum, but I really felt like I was doing something right. And of course not every interaction needs external validation, but sometimes it’s exactly what you need to hear. So pass it on: #youareagoodmama or #youareagoodparent or however you want to say it.
Think of how much we can help parents in Boston if we just use our words to support them. And thanks to that guy at Starbucks–he helped me more than he ever knew.
