A Mommy Story

There’s nothing quite like receiving your weekly BabyCenter update e-mail to make you feel like a complete parenting loser. I signed up for these e-mails while still pregnant and loved getting my weekly fill of what my developing baby was doing. After she was born, I still enjoyed reading what skills I could expect her to master next.

But then it happened. Cordelia’s development didn’t match up with the tidy, compact e-mails. She started to fall behind what the “experts” said she should be doing each month. I began to worry, to examine what I was doing wrong as a parent, and attempt to fix those problems.

I purchased all of the Baby Einstein and Leapfrog toys to stimulate her mentally. I forced her to partake in tummy time several times a day to build the strength she’d need to crawl. And yet she was still slow to say her first word, slow to sit up on her own, and at nine months other babies were crawling circles around her, while she sat there and cried in frustration.

The BabyCenter milestone charts said the majority of babies were starting crawling at eight months, and had mastered it by ten months old. The chart also pointed to my failures at verbal communication, as she was nowhere close to saying mama or dada at eight months. For the record, she still doesn’t say mama. (Yeah, just a little bitter about that.)

This week I received my regular e-mail, giving me tips about potty training, and of course linking to their fabulous selection of potty training supplies for sale. Holy shit, I’m supposed to start potty training? She can’t even say poop yet!

I also read the following:

Some toddlers can even make simple two-word sentences such as “No more” or “All done.” And, as a sign of your child’s growing self-awareness, she may even start referring to herself by name: “Claire go,” for example. But because pronouns can confuse toddlers, it may be months before your toddler can say “I go” or “I need …”

Apparently the verdict on why Cordy’s head is so large is now leaning towards “thick skull” and away from “lots o’ brains” since two word sentences haven’t been heard here yet. As for knowing and saying her name? Ha. She’ll come if I call “here kitty kitty”.

To make things worse, each article at BabyCenter also has a comments section, where readers can comment on their own experiences about these topics. This is where the competition begins. Imagine that one mom you know who brags that her little 14 month old genius can now type her name on the computer and her art is the beginning of a new post-post-modern style. Now multiply that mom by 10,000.

Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, many of these women continue to one-up each other in order to prove they have the most advanced kid on BabyCenter. Your kid can count to six? Well, this kid can recite pi to 10 decimal places! Your kid can put on his own shoes? Well, this kid can lace her shoelaces with a cord she braided herself in colors that match today’s outfit!

Luckily, I no longer rely on these BabyCenter milestone updates to gauge my daughter’s progress. I also have given up most of the mainstream parenting books out there. I’ve reached the point where I now understand that there is no single pattern of development, just as there is no single way to parent your child.

In fact, I often find myself falling away from the experts and looking to my friends with kids and parenting blogs more and more now. Some of the best advice I’ve received has been from other parents who are presently out in the trenches, learning as they go along.

I see child development and parenting in less rigid terms now; it’s actually a fluid process of trial and error, of synthesis and modification. And I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that nothing works for everyone. I’ve seen others struggling with and debating this over the past week. It seems so easy for guilt to overtake us and leave us in a funk of self-doubt. Whether the topic is sleep training, working or staying home, preschool, TV-viewing, or organic foods, anything that threatens the optimal development of our kids forces us into waves of guilt.

So here is my advice: let it go. Let go of What to Expect and Dr. Sears and BabyCenter. Let go of the milestone charts and one-up parents. Let go of the experts who haven’t been parents of toddlers since before Nixon was President. Simple, right?

Instead, listen to your heart and follow your instinct. Pay attention to that voice inside you: it isn’t your pediatrician, your mom, or the Baby Whisperer. If you are making choices that are the best for you, your child, and your family, then you are doing the right thing. Ignore those who tell you there is only one way to do something. There are lots of ways to do anything, and sometimes you will have to try several to find what works best for you.

Also, talk about the issues that do bother you. If you have a blog, get them out there in black and white. (Or whatever colors your design uses.) Ask friends for their opinions, and use the advice you find helpful and discard the rest.

As for me, I think I’m past due to unsubscribe from BabyCenter.