When do you let them fall?

I never knew that someone can be reckless and tentative at the same time until I met my daughter.

She crawls now, awkwardly. She cruises on our furniture, though she will only pull up if she’s climbing on me. She progresses so cautiously, like she’s rock climbing. It’s like you can see her brain planning the next move -- I’ll lift my leg now, and then I will lift my hand and put it right there and so on and so on.

But sometimes she’s just crazy and I fear for her life.

When I am carrying her and she sees something she wants, she will try to leap out of my arms with no regard for her own safety. Or if she’s standing up, holding onto the couch, sometimes she just lets go. And lately, while I put her on the bed while I get dressed, she seems to think it’s a fun game to crawl to the edge of the bed and peer over. I can’t decide if she just assumes I will catch her, thus preventing the possibility of pain, or if she just doesn’t comprehend the potential consequences.

A session of baby play last week makes me think she views me as both her personal safety net and locomotion assistance machine. She was holding onto the coffee table and noticed one of the tv remotes. It’s small and silver, and she loves to put it in her mouth. She gets really excited about this remote. It’s a symbol of power in the house, I suppose, and she probably thinks it’s magic. Anyway, I decided to experiment by putting it out of her reach in such a way that she would have to maneuver around the corner of the coffee table to get it. I was spotting her, of course, just waiting for her to lose her balance as she tried to get to the remote. Instead, she noticed my hand, grabbed it, and let go of the table to get around the corner. Once she was clear, she let go of my hand, reconnected with the coffee table and lunged for the remote.

She got it. And just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I set up the experiment again. Same results.

It’s an odd position to be in. Sometimes, I feel like she won’t ever try anything new unless I push her. But how does she learn consequences? I can’t just let her fall -- not yet. She’s not coordinated enough to keep from hurting herself. But how will she ever learn to do things on her own?

Part of me is happy that my daughter feels so secure that she just assumes I’ll always be there. It makes me feel necessary in a way I’ve never felt before. But how do you teach your kids resilience? How do they learn to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and try again?

When do you let them fall? How often do you let them fail? Is it too early to even worry about this?

Those who read this blog and others who know me might say I have been known to worry a little too much.

I obsess over my daughter’s naps, her development, her weight (she’s on the skinny side for a baby), her health (she has her first ear infection right now), her lack of teeth and hair, and just about anything else you could possibly worry about when it comes to a perfectly healthy, happy child. During Spring Break, for example, we were staying at my wife’s parents’ house. Eleanor was sleeping peacefully in a crib in a different room than our own. But before I could go to sleep, I just had to go in her room and check to make sure she was breathing. Seriously? I hadn’t done that since she was about three months old. I thought I was past that level of ridiculous, irrational fear!

Well, as I figure this out, I’ll keep spotting my daughter in her quest for independence. For now, I’ll catch her as many times as she needs me, but I’ll try not to get in her way. Maybe she’ll tell me when she’s ready.

P.S. I wrote the first draft of this post on Thursday of last week. In the intervening days, she has learned to go around corners by herself and pull up on some low level furniture. She even crawls up and down the two stairsteps in our house, and she has started to walk a little bit only holding one of my hands. I am in awe of her new skills, and I am having a hard time processing the speed of change. Now, if she could progress like this and still take her normal naps (absent the last three days), that would be great :)

“Hi Daddy.”

Being a stay-at-home parent, I find myself swinging from identifying everything my daughter does as a milestone to feeling like nothing ever changes. What this really means is that I feel like I’m either making things up or depending on other people who don’t spend every waking hour with her to tell me if something has changed.

“She’s gotten so big!” people say.

“Really? She looks exactly the same to me,” I say. “But did you notice that her babbling is more complex today?”

“I don’t know, she sounds like a baby,” people say.

The difference between the perspectives makes sense. I watch her all the time, so I don’t notice a lot of physical changes from day to day or even week to week, because they’re so gradual. But because I watch her like a hawk, I’m constantly looking for even the slightest developmental deviation from her norm.

So, my lesson for the day: Developmental milestones line the walls of a dangerous rabbit hole from which there is no escape or, to use another hole metaphor, developmental milestones are the event horizon for the black hole of parental insecurity.

I offer you two examples:

Example #1. Crawling

My daughter doesn’t crawl. She kind of inches toward things, occasionally, ending her quest by rolling over or turning in a circle and finding something new to grab. Honestly, she would much rather make googly eyes at people and smile at them until she breaks down all social boundaries. She also grabs things a lot. And she sometimes puts those things in her mouth. And she likes to walk around the room with me holding up her arms.

But she doesn’t crawl.

If Eleanor snakes her way toward a toy that’s more than a foot or two away, does that mean she’s “creeping?” If I want to make her development sound more impressive, I suppose I can call it that. Though, to be honest, she doesn’t seem the least bit interested in “crawling.” I can’t say I blame her. I don’t crawl. Her mommy doesn’t crawl. Why should she bother?

Most of the new parents I know have babies who are just a bit (three to five months) older than Eleanor. I occasionally see their children and I am in awe of their incredible, sophisticated physical coordination. They seem to be ready for elite gymnastics compared to my daughter.

Of course, I only see these kids every once in awhile and they are older than my daughter and it’s really an unbelievably stupid and unfair comparison game but I engage in it anyway even though I try not to.

Developmental milestones are so subjective! In fact, I direct you here for an interesting recent development in the debate about crawling.

Example #2:

I would not consider my daughter “verbal,” but she has uttered several variations of “Hi Daddy” over the last couple of weeks.

“Hey, Da-Da-Da.”

“Hey, Daddy.”

“Hey Da.”

“Hi Da-Da.”

I am not so vain that I think this actually connotes the same meaning in Eleanor’s head that it does to me, but I will take it. In fact, sometimes I even think she thinks that my wife and I are both “Da-Da.” I suppose I do believe that my daughter thinks this is some sort of way to greet the people who care for her when she remembers that they exist.

So, do I count this as speech? Has she spoken her first word? Who knows? The longer I exist as a parent (and I am going on eight months), the more I am thinking that these milestones every parent keeps track of are way more fluid than I once believed.

A fascinating aspect of the first word debate is the nature of language acquisition itself. It has been noted by many linguists how remarkably similar the words for mother and father are across the world. Hundreds of languages have essentially the same words to denote parents.

But don’t jump on the Tower of Babel train too quickly. Those same linguists have a pretty good theory as to why those words are so close, and it has (mostly) nothing to do with the common ancestry of languages.

“Ma-Ma” and “Da-Da” and “Pa-Pa” and “Ba-Ba” happen to be the first speechlike sounds that most babies make.

So what do I make of this? I think it means that parents have been making up developmental milestones for thousands of years. Apparently, we all cling to the hope that our babies are turning into normal, healthy children and we will use any evidence at our disposal, however flimsy.

***

When she was about four months old, my sister was playing with my daughter, saying her name over and over. Then Eleanor “spoke.”

“Ey-lah-no!”

She did this three times. She has never done it again. I choose to believe that, while I beamed with pride at the time, my daughter had no idea what sounds were coming out of her mouth. As an aside: I also choose to believe that my daughter’s first word is not a narcissistic declaration of her own identity.

I’d rather go with, “Hi Daddy.”

Being a stay-at-home dad is an excruciating exercise in waiting. I read the baby books and anxiously wait for (and sometimes preemptively identify) each new milestone that I am supposed to see next. But I’m never quite sure when they come, and I question their relevance anyway. I’m constantly trying to remind myself that it doesn’t really matter. Is she healthy? Is she happy?

If so, that’s good enough.

It's probably a growth spurt

It’s a growth spurt. She’s teething. She’s just tired. She needs her diaper changed. She needs to poop. She’s hungry. She wants to be held. She’s frustrated because she can’t reach the toy. She wants Mommy. She wants Daddy.

No one tells you how helpless you’ll feel as a parent. Apparently, my daughter can’t actually tell me what she needs. Who knew?! Being pre-verbal makes things more difficult than the baby books would have you believe.

Sometimes my daughter cries. Or screams. Or moans. Or pulls on her ear. Or tries to talk to me. Or she grunts. Or she drools. Or she sticks something in her mouth. She rubs her eyes. She yawns. Sometimes she takes naps. Sometimes those naps are 30 minutes long. Other times those naps are three and a half hours long.

The baby books tell you these are all signs of something, and that different cries mean different things. I think the baby books are lying.

Being a parent is like trying to solve one of those logic puzzles, only with less information:

Clue #1: Eleanor is crying.

Clue #2: There is no Clue #2.

Absent an ability to use logic or rational thought, a problem often compounded by a screaming baby, you give up and start guessing. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you don’t. And what’s frustrating is that even when you do get it right, that doesn’t necessarily mean your baby stops screaming. If she’s tired, and you convince her to take a nap, that doesn’t mean that the nap won’t end, suddenly and without warning, in a new round of screaming 30 minutes later, even though you spent 30 minutes trying to get her to take said nap.

Welcome to parenthood.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in the last seven months is that my daughter is a human, an individual with a separate identity from mine. I know how obvious that sounds, and how stupid I sound for not realizing it more readily, but it’s true.

Chaos reigns with us humans, it seems. Sometimes we’re hungry. Sometimes we aren’t. Some days we sleep well. Some days we don’t. And sometimes we’re grumpy and we can’t explain why. This is true for babies, too, I think.

It’s hard to realize that babies are humans and they experience everything we do (while also cutting teeth -- can you imagine how painful that must be?). But babies can’t tell us about it. So we do the best we can.

I’m not a patient person, and I am particularly impatient when I don’t understand something. I feel like I’m a pretty sharp guy, but I’m constantly stumped by the “signs” my daughter exhibits that supposedly communicate what she needs. That infuriates me. I get so frustrated when I can’t help her, when I can’t “fix” the problem. If only she could tell me what she needs!

Yesterday, Eleanor only took a 35 minute nap in the afternoon. She woke up from that nap at 1:15, and she refused to take another nap until we put her in bed at 6:30. She was miserable, and so was I.

I texted my wife and called my mom, trying to talk through my frustration. I was so upset. I mean, my daughter is screaming and I can’t help her and I’m so tired and all I need is a break from dealing with her. The people who love me listened to my feelings of helplessness, but there was nothing they could do -- my wife was at work and my mom was 70 miles away. They couldn’t meet my needs, even though they love me.

Oh.

They couldn’t solve my problem, any more than I could solve my daughter’s. They could love me. And they could listen and provide encouragement and comfort. But that’s it.

That’s a tough lesson to learn.

Call it evolution or God’s plan, but being helpless is something you have to learn to live with as a parent. Maybe one reason babies take so long to acquire language is so parents can learn this lesson. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to solve your child’s problem, in the moment. But you can love your child, listen and provide encouragement and comfort. In the long run, you hope that your best is enough in most situations.

God grant me the patience to accept my lack of control. And may God grant me the understanding that the love I give my daughter is sometimes the only thing I have to give.

Lessons relearned, or It really does take a village (and other cliches that are true)

Everyone sucks in a vacuum. (Enjoy the pun -- it didn’t occur to me until I actually wrote that sentence that it even was a pun...For what it’s worth, I think parent brain must be worse than pregnancy brain).

I mean it, by the way. I have always been my biggest critic, in everything I have ever done. And despite everyone who tells me that I have the happiest, smiliest baby they have ever seen (and I am not exaggerating), I constantly engage in epic battle with myself -- we’re talking World of Warcraft levels of Sturm und Drang waged in my head -- about how I am doing as a father.

It should be noted: We spend a lot of time together, as I am a stay-at-home dad.*

(*Explanation: This is by choice. I did not lose my job or get sick or anything dramatic. My wife and I always agreed that if we could make it work financially, one of us would stay home when we had a baby. I used to be a teacher, and my wife makes more than twice what I made in that profession. So I’m the lucky one. It really was a no-brainer :)

The hand-wringing and head-banging usually happens when it’s just me and my daughter, hanging out. Or while my daughter entertains herself while I do laundry. Or while I prepare her food. Or while I install cloth diaper sprayers that connect to my toilet. Or while I steal away to reorganize the garage, hoping that the baby monitor stays in range where I can hear when she inevitably wakes from her nap in the middle of my attempt to accomplish the most menial task that is impossible when she is awake.

During the first six months of my daughter’s life, I spent way too much time defining myself as a crappy parent for everything I was doing wrong. I wasn’t holding her enough. I wasn’t giving her enough tummy time. I wasn’t talking to her enough. I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. I wasn’t helping her develop good enough sleep habits. She’s crying because I’m not mommy and she hates me and I’m not meeting her needs -- I can tell by the way she looks at me! And I suck. I’m the worst father in the world.

Then I realized that everyone sucks. When they’re on their own. When there’s no other feedback than the echo chamber inside your own head, you can do a lot of damage to yourself. It took me too long to realize that when other people tell you that your baby looks happy and healthy, you should take that, accept it, and realize that you’re doing the best you can.

I love my daughter. And I know that she knows that I love her (as much as her seven-month-old brain is capable of understanding that). I know because of the smiles she gives me when I pick her up out of her crib in the mornings. I know because she calls me Da-Da-Da. I know because of the joy she brings to other people, and the joy they bring to her. My mom tries to come up and visit from Colorado Springs once a week, and my daughter is ecstatic. She laughs and smiles, and she waves her arms around in happiness whenever Grandma comes over. I know she loves me because she smiles at strangers and she plays with our friends from church. She feels safe because my wife and I meet her needs and love her with all our hearts, even when we screw up.

I’m so thankful for the opportunity to stay at home with my daughter, but it is far harder than I could have imagined. I didn’t expect to have sleep issues and experience the level of anxiety that I do about pretty much everything related to my daughter. But I have realized that other people -- friends, family, church members -- are happy to help. It gives them joy to be a part of my daughter’s life. She learns from everyone who interacts with her. Everyone makes different kinds of googly eyes at her. They play with her differently. They say different things and say things differently than I do. Me? I constantly ask her questions that she never answers. I’m sure she gets tired of that.

It does take a village. A note to expectant parents: This cliche matters. Every child -- EVERY CHILD -- should grow up in a community that surrounds them with love and engages them with joy. I am so thankful that my daughter has that, through our family, friends and church.

So it may not be Thanksgiving, but I am giving thanks right now. My family couldn’t do this without you. My daughter doesn’t know how to say it yet, but I know she would say it if she could:

Thank you.