Glad Holiday Tidings

For lo, I bring you good tidings of great joy.

Happy Holiday Season! As 2015 draws to a close and we look forward to the coming year, I am here to share some super good news with you all! Now that I am a very practiced parent of 2 (ha! 3 weeks and counting), I have come to a very definite conclusion, if only to assuage my own feelings of concern for the immediate future. I have decided that most everyday decisions that I make at this point will not permanently scar my kids! I’m almost sure that this is true.

How have I reached this conclusion? With your help my friends! I know a lot of adults and I must say that many of them are fairly normal people (awkwardness notwithstanding). Most adults that I know give me some hope for my own kids’ adult lives.

For instance, you don’t meet many adults who only eat macaroni and cheese and chicken tenders. And you don’t meet many adults who still need a pacifier to get to sleep. Or folks who are grown but still aren’t toilet trained. Similarly, for my younger daughter, I have yet to meet a 1 or 2 year old who can’t hold up their head simply because they didn’t have enough tummy time when they were very young.

This is not to say that the cumulative parental decisions that we make don’t add up to a “finished product” in our kids, but many of the small things that give us pause simply won’t make as much of an impact as we think. There are certainly things to focus on and work toward, but they generally revolve around helping our kids to be a little bit nicer or a little more patient or a little more thoughtful or a little more resilient. I think that we can let go of some of the concerns about aiding development and providing opportunities for learning, etc.

So this is my Christmas present to myself. I’m letting myself off the hook because in the coming weeks junk food will be consumed, TV will be watched and feelings of greed will most likely spike. These things are “out of the ordinary” for our family, at least for the younger member(s). But I am not going to worry that I’m turning my daughter into a media monster or an attention hog or a sugar eating maniac. It’s going to take a concerted effort, but I’ll give it a go.

Merry Christmas to me!