Lessons from the Second

"Hello, World.  I'm here to teach you some lessons...MWAHAHAHAH..."

I think it’s important to have two children.

I’m not judging:  I come from a family of 5 children and am myself an only child. OK – right.  That doesn’t totally make sense: it’s complicated.

I think as a parent, though, it’s good to have a second child if only for the simple humbling ability to knock down any notion you might have about babies, toddlers and children.  “You MAY have done this already,” the second one smirks to you as it enters the world,  “but I’m here to prove to you that everything you learned the first time around is irrelevant.  It’s back to square one : YOU.  KNOW.  NOTHING.”

Say, perhaps, you so happen to luck out and give birth to a live prodigy of a newborn who does such unfathomable things as sleep through the night or “does nothing but smile or sleep”.   Perhaps they take so easily to the breast you never got to experience nipple blisters or the sudden need to send your husband out at 1am to purchase Jack Newman’s $50 magic Nipple ointment.

Yes, APPARENTLY, there are babies such as those.

And I’m not saying those babies don’t or shouldn’t exist.  NO…I’m sure one day the world will balance out and these kids will fill the roles of high school drug addicts and help boost teenage pregnancy rates.

What I’m talking about is the affect these kids have on the PARENTS.  It is SO IMPORTANT for these parents to know there is NOTHING they could have done differently to prevent this perfect insanity of an idyllic infant.  It’s NOT their perfect swaddling technique OR their ability to magically capture “the window” each and every FREAKING night.  And most importantly, it has NOTHING to do with their calm and demure demeanor.

If you, yourself gave birth to the Dahli Lama of children would you not exude a strikingly calmer demeanour than your good friend who gave birth to a screaming insomniac?

Wow.  I have WAY lost my point.

And now I’m back to it.

The second child is good for lots of reasons, but mostly to contrast the first and give daily humbling reminders to the parents of their absolute LOSS over the nature vs. nurture debate.

I get examples of this daily.  Some days I feel like I live with a Greek Torturer whose sole purpose is to beat out of me any sniff if parenting victory I have experienced with my firstborn.    This week my lesson was entitled   “A Lesson in Reading for the Imperfecionist”

Toby is a perfectionist.  It is a lovely, endearing quality in a child until it results in temper tantrums of frustration at the failure to complete the most basic and mundane of tasks based only on a perceived potential for failure.  Despite being ahead of the books developmentally (as ALL first-borns miraculously are) Toby was the VERY LAST kid in the WORLD to be potty trained and it was all because he REFUSED to even ATTEMPT the daunting task until he knew 100% that he was ready.

I was THAT mom whose friends used to comfort with saying such as, “He won’t still be in diapers when he’s in University!”  Well..DUH…but I WAS a little worried that the Mickey Mouse pull-ups might cause him some grief on the first day of grade 1.

One day, when the timing was impeccably right, when the moon was full and the last leaf had fallen from the willow tree, and his cars were aligned just so in his bedroom floor and his bed was made horizontally and we were having fajitas for dinner…Toby decided he was ready to sit on the potty.

Lo and behold, he peed.

And that was the end of it. 

We had all failed to mention to our little perfectionist that he had the OPTION of still wearing his Mickey Mouse pull-ups to bed at night.  He was dry from that day forward.  Night and day.

And then there was Mia.

Mia has had a dirty mind from birth. Whether it is asking Toby to “Shake his Peee-Nis” in the bath when she thought we weren’t listening, to asking him to spell the word “Pickle” (it starts with a PEE), she has always flourished in the center of bathroom humour.  So the day we off handedly mentioned that fact that she might one day want to pee in something other than her diaper, she RIPPED that thing off and RACED her naked way to the toilet, sat down for half a second, leapt back up and then proudly peed on the floor.

Her ego, surprisingly, remained unscathed.

“OH what the HELL” she said in 2 year old equivalent jargon, “Lets give this another go.”

Diaperless was the new black.

It was a bit of a longer, more painful process, but quite quickly, and still in the 2’s, Mia was potty trained during the day.

At night- that’s a different story.  Sometimes we forget to diaper her and she wakes up at 3am to complete chaotic wetness and comes into our room, not crying, but with her hands in the air with innocent wonder at the mass quantity of fluid that came from somewhere humorous that is in no way her fault or within her realm of something to care about.

If that had happened to Toby we would have found him naked and repenting at the end of the bed with a rosary in his hand.

I’m getting to my point - -really I am.

So Toby is reading.  He’s really quite a good reader.  It started slowly, because, as you guessed it, before Toby knew how to read he didn’t actually KNOW how to read, which is a GIANT OBSTACLE when you are an absolute perfectionist.   I remember Rob and I used to lie on our bed with him painfully escorting him through his own personal hell as he would sound out the words, “M-A-T   S-A-T”   

He would sit in resolute silence looking first at the word “M-A-T” as we egged him on to please PLEASE PLEASE, try at least to make the “Mmmmm” sound.

Eventually, very quietly and after much internal debate and deliberation, Toby would whisper, “Mmmm”

And then we’d move on to “Aaaah”

It only took three syllables to get that very first word out.  “M-A-T”.

After that, if ANY of us had ANY ounce of patience left, we would move on to “S-A-T” to complete the first sentence.

Those two words took EONS to perfect and there was no moving forward until he had it just right.  (The intrigue as to what would happen to MAT after he had successfully SAT was KILLING me!!!)

“We’re screwed,” I said to Rob one night after we sat down to reward ourselves with a glass of victory wine (a thank GOD Mat actually SAT tonight victory…) “How is he EVER going to learn to read with THAT attitude?”

I’m pleased to say that Toby eventually overcame his perfectionistic hurdle with reading and suddenly ‘got it’, propelling himself into the realms of Level 18 reading and admiration from his new Grade 1 teacher.  The hard work had paid off.  OUR hard work.  And our INGENIOUS son (said the parents of the first born.)

And so the other day, as Toby was proudly reading out loud to us from his Level 18 reader, Mia happened to pick up the Level one “Matt Sat” book and confidently announced that SHE was ALSO going to read to us.

She opened the first page without hesitation.

I helped her read the first letter “M” as in “Mia” and “A” as in “Alyssa” and T” as in “Toby”

What did that make?

She thought about this.

“M-I-A”

She replied.

Fair enough – up until now that was the ONLY word she even knew EXISTED in written form.

I corrected her and taught her the word  “M-A-T”, marveling at the lack of screaming and refusal.

“Oh, RIGHT.” She said,”M-A-T”

And then she read the entire book.

“M-A-T is S-ITTING on the G-Round”

(Actually the words said, as you probably are well aware of by now, “Mat Sat”)

On the next page we meet, Sam.

Or, as Mia interpreted the words,

“M-A-T is sitting on the ground and it’s very sunny and his friend is there too.”

A brief reprieve as I taught her the “S’ sound and helped her put together the word “S-A-M”

Page 3:

“S-A-M was also sitting with his friend M-A-T and they had a picnic and the sun was out and…”

Then we turned the page

“Then one day M-A-T JUMPED on S-A-M and they had a fight but they were smiling and they decided to have a tickle fight”

(Actual words on the page: SAM SAT ON MAT)

And so the book went on.  It was the quickest, most enjoyable read we have ever experience in the Mat and Sam series.

“Well…there you have it…” I said to Rob as he looked back at me with a stunned expression.

“We’re screwed,” he whispered as our confident new reader hopped down off the couch. “How is she EVER going to learn to read with THAT attitude?”

They may look the same BUT....