Crap I Feel Needs to be Said: Mother's Day Edition

You all know that Pinterest is the love of my life.  Because one can never have too many different recipes for the WORLD'S GREATEST MASHED POTATOES, nor can they pin enough pieces of furniture that they will never make.

But, sometimes?  Pinterest pisses me right off.

A lot of times, it has to do with kids.

Here's a great example:

Listen.

Everyone I know loves their kids.

And everyone I know- myself ESPECIALLY- could occasionally stand to be reminded that maybe it's not so important to do the dishes or run errands or blahbity blah all Sunday.

But if this sign is meant to be inspirational?  It's not working for me.  What this does, instead, is make me feel immensely guilty for every second I spend not staring at my kid and meditating on the amazement of his very being.  Actually, it makes me nervous when I am hanging out with him.  Am I paying enough attention?  Doing enough fun things?? WILL I REGRET THIS LATER??

Basically, this sign makes me want to scream, "For CRAP'S SAKE, I'm doing the best that I can!"  Believe it or not, it is not news to moms that their kids will grow up and move away some day and that, more importantly, that moms are hugely responsible for the people those kids become, and that responsibility is tied to like, every friggin' thing they do, every single day.  

We all try to live in the present, and to appreciate and notice what we have.  But it is physically and mentally impossible to constantly give children your full and undivided attention, and to constantly create genuine enthusiasm for playing with them.

More importantly, I sometimes question if that's really even good for kids.

Being that it's the only real thing I have to compare it to, when I'm trying to decide how much I need to crawl on the floor and play cars, I try to remember my own childhood.  I use this as basis for my own actions because I have no complaints about my childhood.

I never felt like I had to fight for my parent's attention in any real way.  Sure, sometimes, especially during the summers, they told us to get out of the house and play outside, but that's because we were being fricking annoying, slothing around the house, draping ourselves over furniture and talking about how we were soooo booooored.

But, on a whole?  I don't remember feeling unloved, uncared for, or like I couldn't get enough attention.  Which is shocking, because I have always loved attention.

Which is why this conversation surprised me: maybe two or three months before my mom died, I was giving her this interview that I found at Real Simple (it's awesome- check it out here, and interview your mom).  When the question came up, "What's one thing you would have done differently as a mom?", her answer was, "I would play with you guys more".

Really? I said.

It didn't strike me as the "I really would have liked to play Legos more.  Because Legos are amazing." response; it felt a lot more like "I feel guilty that I didn't play Legos as much".

There are lots of things my parents never played with us.  For instance, I can't even begin to imagine my mom playing Barbies with us.  But who cares?  That's what Erin was around for, even though she never played right, probably because she was jealous that I had the prettier Barbie with the prettier dress.  Which is why she hacked off all of her Barbie's hair.  Psycho.

Despite a total lack of Barbie scenarios, my parents did plenty of things with us.  Things that I remember a lot more clearly than playing Barbies.  Exhibit A: Picking blueberries.  Picking blueberries was like THE thing to do in summer- we all went together and now, as an adult, it's the #1 thing I look forward to about summer.

We also went camping, all the time.  Erin and I shared the tent (ugh), and my parents slept in the camper and we (we = my mom) made dinner on the outdoor stove every night and, to this day, the smell of Ivory dish soap reminds me of washing dishes in big plastic tubs after dinner, using water we hauled over from the fountain in the expandable water jug.

My parents did things with us that they could do and enjoy without wanting to poke their eyes out.  We went to the drive-in, and camped.  We colored eggs and decorated the Christmas tree and watched Anne of Green Gables on the Disney Channel.  We helped plant the garden (against our will).  And for the rest of the stuff, we found friends to play with, or we played by ourselves, horror of horrors.  We had dinner together, as a family, nearly every night.  For years and years, we went to my Nana's house every Sunday, where we quickly abandoned our parents to play with our cousins.

This idea- finding a handful of mutually enjoyed "things" - is what I have started to do with Brady.  There are things that I love to do, and I do those things with him.  We've started reading Stuart Little, a chapter every night (and I can't WAIT until he's old enough for Harry Potter).  We play catch with the velcro ball thing in the back yard.  We cook things.  Last week, we flew a kite in the park.  At bedtime, we tell riddles, or clap out the syllables of things in his room (that one was his idea, guys).

And there are things that he obviously loves to do too, and I do some of those things with him.  I take him to the Nature Center to see the animals.  We go to the library, and parades, and fireworks.  We play Flashlight Dance Party to the radio.  We tell knock-knock jokes that make no damn sense.

And then there are things that I don't do with him.  I don't play Legos.  What do Lego people say to one another?  I have no idea.  I think I knew when I was four, but I've forgotten.  So I make him play by himself.  And when I do that, I might check my cell phone or look at Pinterest for a while.  And when I do, I resent seeing signs about how I'm wasting time with my child and will someday regret this moment.  When I was growing up, there wasn't a cell phone to stare at, but you know what my mom was doing while not gazing at us, filled with wonder?  She was watching Perry Mason.  Same damn thing, just in black and white.

And really, isn't that okay?
Honestly, if you actually lived up to what these signs are suggesting- cherishing every single moment and engaging with your child every single moment?  Is that good for him/her?  From my standpoint, I think that- beyond your intentional message- that you love him- you are also inadvertently teaching him these things:
1.  That he is the center of the universe
2.  That you are at his disposal
3.  That someone should always be there to entertain him
4.  That you are not a person too, with your own non-Lego interests

My worry would be that the shock of finding out that that isn't true is a rough one.

There is quality time.  And then there is all your time.
You do not owe ANYONE all of your time.  And- from my perspective- you owe it to your child to teach them some self-sufficiency.
If my mom had abandoned Perry Mason to do my bidding, I would not have had the chance to make up swingset routines with Erin.  Or hang upside down from the Edwards' swingset, or become the undefeated Fastest Runner on Second Street.  I would not have read all of the Babysitter's Club books.  I would not have fallen off of four different things and broken my arm four different times.

So listen, Pinterest.  Stop the Momma Shaming.

Obviously I can't ask her, but I think that my mom's response about playing with us more has to do with plain old nostalgia- you look back when something is over, and you wish just a little bit that it wasn't.  But wouldn't you do the exact same thing, regardless of how much you had played with your kids.  I don't believe there is any way of avoiding nostalgia.
I'll be forty-six when B graduates from high school (holy crap), and at that time, I'll probably feel really sad and wish for his childhood for a while, but that has nothing to do with not having played with him enough.