7 Months of Simon

Simon turned 7 months yesterday, and I can't imagine him getting any cuter or sweeter than he is right now.  The difficult days of early infancy have gone and it's amazing that this same baby is now laid-back, happy, and content.  And if the baby's happy, mostly we are happy too.  I say "mostly" because Myles is currently in what I like to call "a season of disequilibrium."  Meaning: he melts down more easily at night, resists following instructions, and employs the Mandy stomp.  These things come and go with him, and what I read in a book about kids going through seasons of equilibrium with their parents and then seasons of disequilibrium seems to hold true with him.  I'm not sure why things are harder with him just as they've gotten easier with Simon, but so it goes.  It never ceases to amaze Seth and me that after nearly 8 months of getting dressed every morning for school, it's still difficult for Myles to just go and get dressed.  And, of course, Seth and I are the meanest parents in the world for asking him to do it. 

Simon learned last week to jump in the Johnny jumper that hangs from the door frame, and now he is content to jump for nearly an hour at a time.  He looks like a plump, graceful little ballerina as he jumps from his toes with his arms stretched wide and his hands fanning out.  If Myles happens to be in the tub, the jumping gets much more intense as Simon cracks up at all that Myles does.  Elaborate plots are hatched from the depths of a bubble bath, including batman, two-face, superman and penguin.  Sometimes fishing is involved, and there's always some kind of danger followed by a miraculous rescue.  Typically Myles gets self-conscious if Seth or I try to watch him play and asks us to leave, but he seems to be okay with Simon peeking in on his imaginary world of adventure.  Good for both of them. 

Last Sunday I was on to preach, and so had to make some meaning (in a public forum) of the Boston bombings.  I guess it's not rocket-science to suggest that this is our new normal--these acts of senseless violence that punctuate our lives at an accelerating clip.  We don't know when or where the next incident will take place, we simply know it's coming and there's little we can do to stop it.  For those of us with young children, we want to shield them from the 24-hour news cycle that re-traumatizes all of us with haunting images.  It's not easy being a parent these days; I guess it never has been.  It's the task of our generation to learn how to parent in the context of this incessant violence.  How do we raise spiritually resilient children? 

Lately, articles and blogs have come my way about helicopter parenting...this over-attention and micro-management of our children's daily lives to the extent that they can never learn from a scraped knee.  We want to remove every road block in their way, and in doing so they never learn how to remove a road block of their own.  Our anxiety becomes their anxiety.  Our heightened expectations are projected onto them and if they aren't in the best school or if they don't have the best teacher or if they aren't the best, brightest, strongest, and most good-looking kid in the class then we've all somehow failed. 

I can't help but think these two things are related.  In a society rife with random acts of violence, we parents feel a bit out of control.  We might not be able to control whether a crazy man enters our kids' schools with a gun, but we can try to control other aspects of their little lives to set them up for success.  At least that's what we think we're doing.  Instead, we over-program and over-resource and over-medicate and over-intervene in our kids' lives to the extent that we threaten their growth as human beings.  We just can't help ourselves. 

Myles sometimes comes home from school singing "Just stop, take a deep breath, and relax."  He's learned this in kindergarten as a way to calm down if you are upset.  Maybe they should be teaching us parents the same thing.  In this world, I can hardly think of better advice for Seth and myself.  Just stop.  Take a deep breath.  Relax.  This world is as it is; broken to the core, but still somehow full of beauty and love, grace and compassion.  The sooner we can accept that we are all in the same boat, all along for the ride (and not at all in the driver's seat) the better we will enjoy the ride.