“You have two children!” a mom at the playground yelled at me sympathetically. She seemed amazed. I wish I could say she was unusual.
“I don’t know how you do it,” people say. “I can’t imagine having another kid,” a mom of one tells me. “I could hardly breathe when my girl was a baby.” “How do you take care of two children at once?” Redditors ask each other.
Now, I’d love to be a hero, and some days I feel like I am. But the fact that mankind exists would seem to suggest that raising two children is only an average accomplishment at best.
To answer the question of how I do it, though, I go to a park and let my toddler out of the stroller so he can play on the slide. Then I put the baby down on the grass to play with the leaves. I intervene as necessary to break up fights, kiss away separation anxiety, or bring my kids to a new section of the park. I also like to chat with other moms, play with the kids, and sit around enjoying the sunlight.
Strange behavior, I know. It makes me self-conscious. Other parents cast wondering glances in my direction. What’s her deal?
Meanwhile, a normal mom descends on her daughter who has committed the offense of toddling around: “She’s giving me anxiety. I want her to go down the slide.” The child meekly goes down the slide again and again.
“She’s giving me anxiety,” the mom says. Eventually, she lets the girl walk around on the ground again. The mom follows closely and places a hand on her heart. “She gives me anxiety.”
Sometimes, I think we parents try to direct our children’s every move out of boredom. I’ve succumbed to the temptation sometimes; it feels awkward to stand around for half an hour watching a child pick up wood chips. Society has agreed that play is good because it promotes learning, but no one can be sure whether that applies to the thousandth wood chip.
Tackling a little boy might be hysterical to him, but it contributes nothing to the GDP.
So we try to do something that feels productive, whether or not it’s necessary. We warn about germs; we warn about boo-boos. We talk constantly. We drag a kid to the xylophone and tell him he’s playing it wrong.
Helicopter parenting is hard work. Many Western families are choosing not to have the second child, and I suspect one major factor is the parents are often exhausted from dutifully micromanaging their first one. It might not be an exaggeration to say that the West is dying for lack of fun.
But wait a second. Why would we feel such an insane urge to be productive that it’s difficult to spend half an hour simply watching a child play?
Maybe we’ve forgotten what to do with kids because we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Many Westerners can’t dance because we’re too uptight to goof off in public. We struggle to bond with friends because we’ve lost the art of teasing. We go to park benches only to get on our phones because we don’t know how to amuse ourselves with the view.
A people’s attitude towards play has everything to do with their understanding of noneconomic value. Tackling a little boy might be hysterical to him, but it contributes nothing to the GDP. So the tackling is only worth doing if the boy is worth loving, if laughs are worth having, and if life is worth reveling in.
It’s a very fine thing for a mom to ride on the swing herself just for fun. I think we should do it with a smirk, in defiance of a society that cannot see its intrinsic worth that God has bestowed on us and our children.
Having a couple of kids is not the end of an enjoyable life, as many believe. It’s an opportunity to learn how to enjoy life. Children haven’t learned to be embarrassed about having fun, which makes them the best teachers of how to make anything interesting.
Two kids? I only hope that God will send more.