Grati-tag

Three mini chapters on babies and teaching.

NAILS

Cutting a baby’s nails has the high stakes of a college essay, the physical exertion of a 5K and the precision skills of someone who knits while off-road jeeping. There’s not much more to be said. Just that I think this type of parenting struggle would make a great reality TV show. Also, I don’t regularly cut Solly’s nails. I am only after ONE nail. The snaggle one, making his face look like he battled that razor sharp Florida grass during naptime and lost big time.

THE NAP

You set up these wonderful plans with grandparents and block off huge chunks of time that include travel, packing diaper bags, portable cribs, and your sanity that can now fit in the small side pocket with the broken zipper. The only thing you can’t plan is THE NAP. You could have the most “incompatible with naps” child in the universe, but the minute they are at Grandma’s, they sleep like a dream. Then, the grandparents are like, “Will we see him? When will we get to play with him? When will he wake up?” After an hour or so goes by, inevitably one or both of the grands runs to Walgreens to pick up more ketchup because it’s closer than the grocery, but on the way they realize they also need two more burger patties which Walgreens doesn’t carry (glad about this, because, gross), and by the time they get home, the baby has already played and is, yes, onto his second nap. It’s not the baby’s fault. It’s THE NAP. It knows. And gets jealous of grandparent day and wants baby all to himself. Then, like a fickle friend, is done with baby for EVERY OTHER DAY THAT IS NOT GRANDPARENT VISIT DAY.

THE TAG

I have been whispering two things as I lay Solly down to sleep.

“Humor and kindness” I say, then kiss his cheek. I’m trying to get these things in his brain. I know he’ll need them, and so will the world.

Then, like the second grader who plants her grass seeds in the milk carton on the school windowsill, I can’t take my eyes off the black dirt while waiting to see the green fruits of my whispering poke through. Kindness is tough to recognize in a baby, so I’m not too worried that I don’t see this yet. Not a lot of baby’s hold doors open for people or have the index finger/thumb control to write and mail a check to Unicef.

But humor isn’t hard to recognize in a baby. I’ve read the baby book(s). Only one of them - the parenthetical “s” is there as a goal. I also have a nephew who is 6 months older than Solly. Calan and my one baby book both point to the fact that babies start to get smiley around 5 or 6 months with everyone; golden retriever style with no discriminating. Developmentally babies don’t have stranger danger till they’re 9-12 months, at which time they only reserve grins for family and friends. Solly is about 6ish months while I write this and NOT a smiler. This is hard for me. I value laughter so much that I did stand-up comedy in LA. I thought my impressions of inanimate objects were pretty fun, and so did the three folks in the late night bar audience. So chalked this up as a success.

As I watched my smiley nephew, I would turn and make stretchy faces only a theatre parent can make at my serious baby, and began to be disappointed by the lack of response. Then a huge alarm went off in my brain. I was disobeying one of my teacher mantras with my own kid: “I may never see the impact of my efforts, but I’ll keep investing anyway.” … BUT … I WILL be around to see the impact because I’m the parent now, not the teacher! Oh no. What if I keep trying to get Solly to smile and he never does? Or he never laughs at a fart?! Or he thinks puns are stupid! ... I mean they are …. but less so when read from a candy wrapper. The candy is the sentence, and the pun is the little punctuated wink at the end. If the pun is the sentence, groan, right? I digest. I mean digress.

I’ve worked so hard not to be emotionally invested in outcomes as a teacher. Process and growth, yes, but outcomes, not so much because I don’t have control over how the student internalizes the information. … BUT I’M SUPER EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN MY SON. He just has to smile!

Then I had to ask myself. Must he smile for me or him? Because he’s a pretty chill, contented baby. … I guess more for me then. And that’s when I realized I’d just stepped foot into my first parenting cliche. Wanting my kid to like the things I like: smiling. Also, I dislike cliches almost as much as puns. This was my first encounter with supporting my kid to be his own person. But he’s not! He’s still an extension of me** I carried him and grew him in my belly uterus and my body still feeds him! He should like SMILING!! But if he doesn’t. I mean. I’ll still love him. But I’m not gonna lie, it will be harder.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to add another word to the nightly two if he wasn’t responding to either of them. Also, as a high school arts department head and teacher I have been battling student apathy and getting 10 out of 20 journals back on average (one of my classes is the two steps forward 1.95 steps back type***). Half the class are getting F’s just because they won’t turning in a one page weekly journal.

So, at Solly’s sleeping times I began to to mumble “humor, kindness, and work - at least enough not to fail things”

Oh my god. An immediate change in Solly. Till this point he had stared at toys with casual interest and turned one or two over in his hands. Now, he began finding the tags on these toys with crime lab specificity. Like someone was paying him to clock in and out around naps and only hunt down tags in between. This work became never ending. Solly sonar could locate any tag - a plastic rattle with a little half centimeter tag would be pinched in his fingers, the underside of an ikea chair was no match for hiding its tag, and you’d think a white blanket would mask a white tag - no way. My grandma gave him a toy called “Taggies” which is a square with loops of fake fabric tags along the edge. Solly would have none of these. He quickly found the one REAL “made in China” tag with lightning speed and put it in his mouth with a satisfied, … smirk maybe?

I now call them Grati-tags. Because I am grateful that my son has discovered a work ethic. And that maybe he’s found some humor in this work. And without making it about me of course, maybe I can help grow the smirk into a smile. But I won’t push it. I’ll try not to. I didn’t birth Solly so I could have a mini me. I birthed him to give me extra help around the house. Just kidding. I birthed him for the same reason I teach. I love seeing discovery, growth and wonder in children. And there are definitely those three things happening with the tags. #Gratit-tag

**cliche, apologies

***cliche, but I tried to put my own spin on it