As a parent I spend too little time when I am with my children considering the impact of my actions and reactions and too much time fretting about it when I am not around them. My brain spins on the harshness of some response. Rationally, I understand that we cannot predict which things will make a lasting impression on their psyche and result in years of therapy. I might regret and worry for days over a sharp rebuke I made that sent my oldest child storming up to his bedroom, work up the courage to discuss my reaction the following weekend, only to have my son look at me quizzically. Years later I imagine myself sitting at an intervention (I cannot see if it is his or mine), being confronted not about what I said, but instead because his brother had a less steep penalty for a similar behavior.
My youngest child was enamored for years with a children’s book that was a hybrid between a board book and a picture book. The right size for a board book, but with small slick pages meant for older fingers to turn. It was a book perfectly designed to draw a preschooler to it, grab it, and bring to a parent to snuggle in their lap and read it with the child. This book whose simple red, yellow and blue appearance and simple title, Press Here, belied the cleverness behind this interactive book. The author essentially required that the child engage their parent in the silliness that is this book. The first page, if I can remember, had three painted yellow circles on it in a row, like someone had used a thick artists brush with a quarter as a model. A thin black arrow points to the first circle, and is accompanied by the text, “Press Here.” Another arrow points to the corner of the page, and urges, “Turn the page.” On the next page, we find the same painted circles sitting nonchalantly still, but the first one is now red. Now an arrow points to the middle circle and entices the child, “Press here and hold for 3 seconds.” After turning the page, we discover that the second dot is now blue. And so goes the book, engaging the child to affect the result of the next page by the action he or she takes with the current page. The child triplicates the dots by tapping three times on each one one page at a time; then the child is encouraged to turn the book on its side to find on the next page that the dots have all slid to the bottom of the page. During the journey through the book, the child turns on and off the “lights” increases the size of the dots, makes the dots disappear, and more. Giggles and encore requests vary depending upon the acting ability of the adult reading the book to the child, but the author has done their best to make it fool-proof for the adult.
If only all of parenting were so.