A dear friend has jokingly called T, Steve 2.0, in the past because she sees so many similarities. The truth is that no one fits neatly into any sort of characterization who I know. Is he the one in prison, or the one who was so charming as a young man? Is he the one who hired David Duke, or the one who raised well adjusted children despite? Is she the one who can’t cope, or is it him? Or both? Was my dad a rage-a-holic fraud or was he a talented doctor and musician? No one I have met in my life fits neatly into an easy classification – it’s always yes, but… .
A friend once told me a long time ago that life itself doesn’t fit neatly into a set of questions and corresponding answers. As a mater of fact, there are no answers in the back of the book.
Well welcome to childcare 110, we skipped 101 and 104 and the rest and went straight into 109 and so we are treading water somewhat. A friend yesterday with two kids and one on the way said they are not like combustion engines with directions, each one is individual. His 3-year-old daughter did not eat anything but peanut butter for six months. And so there it is.
Yesterday we again worked through eating 110 – and at the end of the day he had taken 24 ounces of formula, a full serving of green beans, a well toasted piece of homemade raisin bread, a half a banana, one cube of an orange slice, a waffle. And hey, that’s not bad for a kid with the stomach the size of a kiwi most likely. And he pooped and peed and so all signals are functioning.
But where we found our challenge yesterday came in another area that has been surfacing in the past few weeks – my comforting approach and T’s disciplined approach. Could you spoil a baby? When does comforting, succoring, parenting, disciplining begin or end? The answer once again is in the individual and our response to him.
What’s fascinating about this whole process is that when I met Tatjana I realized that I had a lot more male tendencies behind my high heels and lipstick then I had ever pondered. And T with her mannish looks was so girly it was sometimes comical. We were yin and yang in surprise packages. But in parenting, I don a mother’s or female cap without even flinching, while her reaction from the get go has been more male, more objective, more Steve 2.0.
I have been worried about offering Tin a male and female view and about bringing men into his life as well as all sorts of other experiences – other adopted children, other mixed race families, other same sex parents, as well as the black and white of our existence, but the reality is that on the way to evolution humans engender both male and female fluidly and children require parents who are subjective and objective fluidly and children learn best that food is interesting and weird and good, and parents are flawed and perfect, and that in the end, on any given day, it’s up to the individual to decide whether it’s all good or not.