Act Like You've Been Here Before: Thoughts on Parenting

Being an older millenial, the only Tik Tok I’m really down with is the Ke$ha track (still a banger, by the way) but this week, I saw a video which really hit home.

When I told people I was pregnant, I was beset upon by well-intention advice and I quickly realized that parenting - much like making a mixtape - is a highly individualized and personal process.

There are a lot of rules but you’re the one who makes them and determines how mutable they are.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of mom I want to be. I even wrote about it when I was pregnant and now that I actually am a mom, I think about it even more. It’s an ever-evolving process.

My primary belief is that I’m not raising a child, I’m raising a person and I want my son to be the kind of person that I would be proud to hang out with and call mine.

A person with intelligence and intelligence enough to know that if he’s the smartest person in the room, he needs to go to another room. A person with unyielding empathy and kindness. A friend you can rely on, a man you trust.

In short, when people say his name - I want the next sentence out of their mouths to be, “Oh man, I fucking love that guy! Will’s a good dude.”

Basically, I’m trying to raise some sort of awesome Eddie Vedder/Dave Grohl/Bruce Springsteen hybrid.

The second biggest value I want to impress upon my son is, “Act Like You’ve Been Here Before.”

And that’s much easier to do if you’ve actually been there before.

So, we take Will pretty much everywhere we go - restaurants, bars, museums, street fairs, breweries, state parks…

He’s a constant fixture at Brewery Trivia Night and I’ve changed his diaper in a mess (literally) of bathrooms which don’t have changing tables.

You goddamn right we do, Reecy and if you put a shiny nickel in the jukebox and play Sweet Child O’ Mine, he’ll do the Axl Shuffle.

Of course, I’m not an asshole about it and I understand that there are certain places you just don’t bring kids because in all likelihood, they’re gonna be miserable and we will too. After all, there’s a Mariana Trench’s gulf of difference between a sports bar and a high-end cocktail bar.

When we went to Paris last year, we made a conscious choice not to go inside the Louvre because no-one wants to deal with a toddler when they’re trying to absorb Delacroix’s Liberty Leading The People.

And we’ve definitely gotten a few raised eyebrows/irritated looks about having a kid in certain places, but here’s the thing.

If you can bring your shitty husband who won’t shut the fuck up about how Jordan is actually better than Lebron or your annoying girlfriend who thinks Ivanka is actually like, really amazing - I can bring my kid.

Will needs to understand how to act in a variety of public venues and that’s easier to do if you’ve got a foundation for it.

I think part of this stems from the fact that I am excellent at code switching because I kind of had to be.

I moved to the States from England when I was 11. Not only was I from a different country but I grew up in a heavily Indian neighborhood in London and culturally, I was all over the map. I didn’t have the same touchstones and experiences as my peers and because, I am the most people please-y of all the people pleasers in addition to being a chubby 12-year-old with frizzy hair and glasses, I wanted desperately to connect and fit in and have friends.

It taught me how to think on my feet and how to polish up my natural charm but goddamn, it is exhausting to be “on” all the time and brew up a false sense of confidence.

I am still like this…only with better hair.

I do not want Will to have to deal with it.

The one thing that I used to get super stressed about was Will’s sleep schedule. I have friends whose children go to bed at 7:30pm and wake up at 7:00am whereas my son typically goes to bed around 9:30pm and wakes up raring to go at 6:30am.

I was so worried about his intellectual development because I kept thinking he wasn’t getting enough sleep but now, my kid’s educating me on the difference between an allosauruses and raptors, so I think we’re gonna be fine.

Ana Gildersleeve noted this difference in her TikTok.

Parents stop what they are doing — even though they are having fun — because they need to put their kids to bed at 7 p.m….If you see a kid awake past 8 p.m., it's like 'You're a bad mom,' but in Spain it doesn't matter where you are. If you bring the stroller, the kid will fall asleep….And [Spaniards] include the kids everywhere. In the US, we separate children's activities from adult activities. Parents organize their lives around the children's schedule, but in Spain, children adapt to the parent's schedules.

I have spent a LOT of time at the Science Museum and playgrounds over the past two years but I think we’ve got a good balance where Will has also adapted to our schedule and is down to hit up trivia every week where he can happily munch on fries, watch his tablet and hang out with his aunts and uncles while Mommy argues that Come On was the Stones’ first single and oh my God, how did public school fail you so badly that you don’t know that?

I have no idea what the hell I’m doing and I have a sneaking suspicion that no-one really does - least of all Mommy Bloggers and the rabble of judgy parents on Facebook - but I do know what works for us.

That’s all you can do, right? Make the mixtape you most wanna hear.

Yeah, there are some trials by fire and some rough days and nights but on the whole?

Will’s kinda awesome and I’m really proud of the person he’s becoming. I can’t wait to see where he goes from here. Hopefully, the path leads to the same room as these guys.