Expectant dads and moms usually have months in which to mentally prepare and collect endless pearls of child-rearing wisdom from well-meaning friends and relatives. I had forty-eight hours.
For two years my wife and I had repeatedly played the fertility lotto, and lost, trying increasingly ingenious and unromantic ways to accomplish what seemed to happen so easily for others. One morning, after another such failure, we ran into our family doctor and exchanged a muzzy-headed word or two. So focused on the latest disappointment we hardly acknowledged that he offered to place us on an adoption list. We promptly forgot that conversation and shortly became immersed in another fascinating cycle of intrusive science experiments in the mysterious laboratory that used to be my wife. If you had trouble dissecting frogs in school, advanced fertility is not for you.
On a Monday night the phone rang. It was the doctor and he said he had our baby. Our baby? I had never even been in the pink and blue aisle in Wal-Mart and suddenly I had a baby. Wednesday at noon the nurse placed my daughter in my arms for the first time. We were so unprepared—my daughter spent her first evening in her new home perched on the table between boxes of stir fry and the sum gum. I was tempted to call her Takeout.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that all free and friendly child-rearing advice is worth exactly what you paid for it. Every child is different and figuring out what works for you is a matter of trial and error. Mainly error. A case in point: experts almost unanimously recommend timeouts to correct the recalcitrant child. Timeout is a mainstay in the arsenal of parental discipline.
When my daughter was around three years old she experienced a full category three meltdown, pummeling me in the chest with her tiny elfin feet as I hoisted her up and marched toward her room. When I placed her on the bed and turned to leave, she went from a category three to a five, and the tone of her voice, something to which all parents are finely attuned, had changed from frustration to terror. Twice I quietly explained I would return to check on her after a five minute timeout and attempted to leave. Her wails began to eclipse the town’s fire sirens. Timeout wasn’t working. Her childhood emotions were so completely overwhelming—a full body immersion in feelings she could neither understand nor control—that leaving her alone with them was as frightening as being left to drown. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shaking little body. I assured her I would stay until she calmed herself. Within minutes she stopped crying and never had a tantrum again.
Almost all parents at one time or another near a breaking point when that sweet little bundle turned Tasmanian devil really tests our emotional limits. When that happens, step back and take a breath or two. Remember it’s not personal and it’s not about you. If you’re stressed, give yourself that timeout. It’s better for both of you.
Be warned that I’m not your typical dad so that my take on being a father is about as useful as those free offers you get in the mail. Results may vary. I’m a home school dad who put my career on hold to raise my daughter. I started out as just a stay-at-home dad trying to figure out what to do with a baby when she wasn’t napping. Plunking her in front of the television for hours to watch a purple dinosaur made me want to go extinct.
We read books, cut out shapes, learned animals and the alphabet. By the time she went to preschool she had read a hundred books or so. I take no credit for that. She absorbed information like a sponge. All I did was expose her to it. When the time came to enroll in school she didn’t make the cutoff date for her age, so I had to decide whether to make her repeat kindergarten and first grade or continue on our own. Almost seven years later my daughter entered public school and still does things her own unique way.
Being a dad is doing things you never imagined doing and discovering newness in an ordinary world, and I don’t just mean finding the broccoli you thought she ate hidden in your jacket pocket. There are no definitive one-size-fits-all answers to crucial parenting questions like how many Webkinz can be safely stuffed in a backpack. Last time I dared to peek in my daughter’s room her bed was stacked with more wildlife than the Amazon rainforest. So, I’m probably not qualified for advice about setting limits.
Every day may not have memorable moments, but each one is a treasure, like the first time I played dress up with my little girl. Sometimes you just have to break down some barriers and live a little. But, just ask yourself, would you take advice from a guy who answered the door in a tiara and a pink tutu? Right, neither would my mailman. Ah, the memories.
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