Five things I didn't understand until I became a parent

Like my friend Sandra says, being a parent can feel like living on another planet. No matter how much other parents try to explain it to you before you have children, there is no substitute for the actual experience. Sometimes it's a weightless, joyous moonwalk and other times it feels like you've lost all contact with the space station and you have no idea how to get back to solid ground. Here are some things I've learned in my three years of parenthood.

1. NEVER SAY NEVER. 

A few years ago when Owen was a baby, I was visiting a college friend in La Jolla, a beautiful coastal town just north of San Diego. She and her husband had just finished renovating their home. As part of the renovation, they had remodeled the kitchen into something out of a decorating magazine, complete with a white-and-blue tiled breakfast bar and a flat screen TV. When I came down for breakfast the first morning,  her two boys, ages 6 and 4, were sitting at the breakfast bar eating cereal, their legs danging from the bar stools and their eyes glued to cartoons. I can't believe they have a flat screen TV in the kitchen. I would never let my kids eat in front of the TV.

Dinner time

Fast forward to last summer when Tess was born. Owen started throwing the biggest tantrums I'd ever seen. He'd throw himself on the floor and scream, flailing around for what felt like hours, inconsolable. Any time I picked up Tess to feed or change her, Owen would cry, yank her leg or try to sit on her. I couldn't leave him alone with her for fear that she wouldn't have any eyeballs when I returned to the room. One time, while I was changing her diaper, he wrapped his arms around my legs and yelled, "My mama! My mama!" He was not taking the new addition well. Dave was working long hours and I felt helpless with the two kids alone. Dinner time, after I had picked up Owen from daycare, were the worst times. Before I knew it, I was dragging his high chair from the kitchen into the living room, positioning it right in front of the big screen TV. I let him watch any and all videos he wanted until bedtime.

Since then, he has eaten breakfast and dinner in front of the TV, mindlessly shoveling oatmeal or turkey and broccoli into his mouth while watching Thomas, Mickey Mouse or Clifford. "More milk, please!" he yells from his high chair, holding out his sippy cup like I'm his personal waitress. I acquiesce to his demands because it keeps him occupied and quiet, a very valuable thing. In the morning, it gives Dave and me time to get ready for work. In the evenings, I can get Tess ready for bed, feed her a bottle, sing to her and put her down in peace. So yeah, my kid eats in front of the TV. Maybe it's not so bad. He is an American after all.

Parenting is a huge opportunity for judgment, both of others and myself. I can't tell you how many times other mothers have disclosed things to me like their son will eat nothing but pancakes and add, "I know, I'm a bad mother." No, maybe you're just doing the best you can. I remember recounting to one mom how much harder it was to stay on top of everything with two kids. She leaned in and uttered three words, "Lower your standards." I gasped. How could I possibly do that? What would others think of me? What would I think of myself? These days that matters less and less. More often when I catch myself starting to judge another parent, I stop and think, "Whatever works."

2. WHY MY MOM LOOKED SO TIRED. 

Pregnancy books will tell you that becoming a parent will make you closer to your mother, or at least understand her better. I'm inclined to agree. Before I had children, my mom often complained that she didn't get much help raising me and Eric when we were little. My dad worked long hours at his dental practice. The last thing he wanted to do when he got home was give us baths and read us bedtime stories. In fact, my mom said, dad would come home from work and fall asleep on the couch in the family room, expecting her to keep us quiet until dinner. My grandma, who lived 20 miles away, never wanted to babysit much or take us for the weekend. "I already raised four children," my mom says her mother told her.

Parenthood: the ultimate ropes course

Through the years, I dismissed these comments as the bitter reminiscing of a divorced woman. I rolled my eyes at her pity party. I didn't want to feel guilty about how hard it was for her. I remember the tightness in her mouth and the slump in her shoulders whenever I would "back talk" as she called it. I remember standing at the top of our yellow carpeted stairs when I was a teenager yelling down at her while she yelled up at me from the bottom. I don't remember what we were fighting about. But like most smart kids, I knew exactly what to say to push her buttons and took great satisfaction in watching her lose it.

Owen's not even three yet and his version of back talk is already emerging. The other morning before work I was frantically vacuuming up a weekend's worth of crumbs embedded in the living room rug before the family we share a nanny with came over with their baby. Owen walked over to the electrical outlet, put his hand over the plug to the vacuum cleaner, poised to pull it out of the socket. He looked over at me, grinning, his eyes saying, "What are you going to do about it?" Negotiating with him in these moments is like being in a hostage situation. I have to remain calm and talk him off the edge of naughtiness without pleading or yelling. It's a delicate balance, one I get to practice often.

3. SLEEP TRAINING IS AN ONGOING PROCESS. 

Of all the things my mom struggled with in raising us, lack of sleep was never one of them. In fact, she told me recently, when I was four months old, someone told her I was old enough to sleep through the night without eating and to just give me a pacifier. So she did and I began sleeping through the night. Done. End of story. She may be right. Maybe I was a miracle baby. But that is not my experience or the experience of the sleep-deprived new parents of my generation who swap sleep training tips like a valued commodity. Owen was six months old before he stopped waking up once or twice a night. Tess took even longer. All the sleep training books make it sound as if you let your child cry themselves to sleep one or two nights in a row, they'll start sleeping through the night forever. It's something you can do in a weekend. Done. End of story.

Victory

Bullshit. With Tess, I would rock her to sleep, then put her down in her crib ever so gently, sneaking out of the room like a cat burglar. Seconds after I put her down, she would start wailing. So I'd pick her up and we'd go through the bouncing, singing, rocking, put down, wailing routine again and again. It got so ridiculous that I became willing to let her cry it out, something I wasn't willing to do with Owen. He was my first born and it didn't feel right to let him cry, no matter how much the books reassured me we weren't emotionally scarring him. That he needed to learn to "self soothe" and "rapid extinction" was the best thing we could do for him, for ourselves, for our family.

Tess got the Ferber method. I would hold her, sing one song, put her down in her crib and walk out. She would scream. I would watch the clock from the other room. By 10 minutes, she usually settled. But it took nearly a week of listening to her scream at every nap and bedtime before she would roll over when I put her down and go to sleep without a peep. The first time it happened, it felt magical. Like the sleep angels had finally descended. But it didn't last. Sometimes, at 11 months, she still cries when I put her down, other times she doesn't. Sometimes she'll sleep through the night, no problem. Other times she wakes up wailing, like last night at 3 a.m. It's much better than it was but there's no done. End of story. Not even with Owen.

The human boomerang

When that little bugger climbed out of his crib a year ago and we converted it to a toddler bed, he became a human boomerang. He would come into our bedroom five or six times a night, no matter how many times we got up and took him back to his bed without talking, just like the Super Nanny advocates. A year later, he does it less but it still happens. This morning he climbed into bed with us at 5 a.m., completely naked. That's his new thing. Taking off his diaper and pajamas in the middle of the night, then peeing all over his sheets and comforter in his sleep, even his pillow. Like I said, parenthood is like living on another planet. Sometimes a very wet planet.

4. TODDLERS CAN'T SHARE. 

In the winter, we take Owen to an indoor playground called Little Beans Cafe. It has slides, a kitchen with plastic vegetables, shopping carts, a fire house, toddler-sized cars, puzzles, and couches and a coffee bar for parents. In a word, it's bedlam. But the real action happens at the train table, where toddler boys push trains around the wooden tracks and take turns snatching them from each other. Screaming and crying ensues, as one boy cradles the coveted train to his chest as the other boy tries to pry it out of his hands. Parents intervene, imploring the chest cradler to turn it over. "You've had it long enough, Ryder. Now it's his turn." Ryder looks at his mom without loosening his grip. "It's okay," the dad of the prier will say. "Charlie, it's his turn right now. You need to wait." "No it's not okay," Ryder's mom will say. "He needs to learn to share."

My trains!

Share. Share. Share. You will hear parents throwing that word around constantly at playgrounds, playgroups, play dates and anywhere else toddlers gather. They'll huddle over the two tiny combatants, trying to negotiate a peace treaty by explaining the concepts of selflessness, generosity and compromise ("You can play with it for five minutes, then he gets it for five minutes"). But these are concepts that toddlers' brains have no way of comprehending. Blame it on the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that specializes in problem solving, social awareness and overriding impulsive behavior. It's not fully developed until we're well into our 20s. And yet we expect 1, 2 and 3 year olds not to grab whatever they want, whenever they want it.

When Owen gets a train snatched from him, he'll look over at me. I'll shrug my shoulders, raise my eyes as if to tell him, "It happens." The mom of the snatcher will apologize to me and try to return the train. "It's okay," I'll say. "He snatched it from someone else five minutes ago." And so it goes. When Owen's being particularly grabby, I'll watch him stockpile his stolen goods, then ask him, "Okay, which train can he play with?" He invariably turns one over without me mentioning anything about sharing.

I think the real reason we're so intent on discussing sharing with toddlers is for us, not for them. It's because we, the parents, have fully developed prefrontal cortexes. We know it's rude to grab something out of someone else's hand even if we desperately want it. We worry what the other parent will think of us if we let our kid do it. I know I do. I don't want anyone to think I'm not a properly socialized, responsible parent. I sometimes wonder, however, what would happen if we weren't so quick to intervene and insist on sharing? Would it turn into Lord of the Flies? Or would one kid lose interest and find something else to play with?

5. POTTY TRAINING WOULD BECOME ONE OF MY GREATEST LIFE ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

It's no small thing to get someone to stop pooping in their pants. I mean really. It's just so convenient. They don't have to stop what they're doing and someone else cleans up the mess. I've graduated from an Ivy League school, won awards for my reporting and relocated to numerous cities where I didn't know anybody. Yet nothing felt quite like the accomplishment of getting Owen to go pee pee and poo poo in the potty. I wasn't even considering potty training when I struck up a conversation with a mom at a nail salon who told me over pedicures that she had discovered the best potty training method ever. She had just used it on her son, who was 2 years old.

A toddler classic

"How old is your son?" she asked. "Almost 2 and a half," I said. "We've got plenty of time." Owen had started talking about poo poo around his second birthday. He would tell us right before he started going in his diaper. So I consulted our parenting book but it said not to start potty training until he was three, so I dropped it. Until now. "Actually," the mom said, "the later you wait to potty train him, the harder it gets. And boys aren't harder to potty train than girls. That's a myth." That was news to me."You should check it out," she said. "It's called 'Oh Crap' and it's a PDF you download from the internet for $10. It's written by a mom who does this for a living. It's an easy read and she's funny." I decided to look into it. Immediately.

While reading "Oh Crap," I realized this whole potty training thing required a big commitment from the parents. The author, Jamie Glowacki, made that clear. What's the biggest factor in whether or not your child gets potty trained? You. So if you're not all in, don't do it. There's no putting the diapers back on. Jamie didn't believe in rewards or waiting until your child "seemed ready" either. This was about socialization, pure and simple. Teaching them that pee pee and poo poo go in a specific place. And like most of the parenting techniques that resonate with me, it was about being calm and consistent. No freaking out when he had an accident on the carpeting. You clean it up and calmly remind him, "Poo poo goes in the potty, not on the floor."

To undertake this challenge, I had to take some days off of work. Yes, working parents, Jamie said, this is going to require your undivided attention. But the time and money you save later will be worth it. So I did. Over a long weekend in December, I spent the first day at home with Owen totally naked, doing nothing but playing trains with him and noticing his body signals when he had to go so I could prompt him to use the potty. Day 2 I put a shirt on him. Day 3 he got sweatpants too, but no underwear for another three weeks, as those can feel too much like diapers, and cause him to have accidents.

He had plenty of accidents. So many that it seemed like he would never get it, even though we brought his little blue potty everywhere we went while in LA over Christmas vacation. We stopped to let him pee in parking lots. We brought the little blue potty to Christmas parties. We prompted him to go before we left the house and whenever we arrived at our destination. Slowly but surely he began to get it. He was so proud of himself. "It looks like a snake, Mama!" he would yell. "It looks like a snake!" I cheered and clapped and agreed with him. "It sure does! Good job!" I had no idea that poop could be so exciting. It's one of the many things I didn't understand. Until I became a parent.