(Start humming along helpfully, finally breaking into full song at the chorus to child's mortification. Child mutters along half-halfheartedly just to shut you up).
"That's right, that's the one! Oh, we can't hear you honey, sing a little louder!"
"Yay! That was sooo good baby! Yay!!! Again, again!!"
It is while graciously accepting compliments at my son's lackluster effort to be rewarded with another bowl of raspberries that I realize I have somehow morphed into Gypsy Rose Lee.
I have no idea how this happened. I am fully, painfully aware that Pre-Schooler N couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, and that his dance abilities fall squarely into the 'bounce up and down until you fall over' category of gracelessness, but for some reason any effort at musical entertainment seems to bring out the worst sort of stage parent in me.
Because let's face it, parenthood is a competition. It's a blood sport. It's the fucking Hunger Games of the playground. And no matter how hard you try to resist, you will still be pulled into the wet sucking mud hole of 'who did it first' and 'who did it better' as soon as the first Mama Katniss enters the field of play.
It's not like I was unprepared. I'd seen the excruciatingly polite eviscerations that occur on the playgrounds or at daycare. "Oh, I see little Eustace is still wearing a diaper. We were so blessed that our precious Brittanie-Lee-Ashleey-Kahytlinn toilet-trained almost immediately after delivering herself by C-section. Have I shown you the marvelous job she did stitching me up before clamping off her own umbilical cord? But I'm sure he's juuuuust fine. After all, there are so many programs for backwards kids nowadays.'
And those are the nice ones.
I have to say that I've escaped relatively unharmed during such skirmishes. It seems that the mommy wars have little use for gay adoptive fathers, so many of us get a pass because we're male and homosexual -- ergo, someone they can bitch to about the other moms, and occasionally tap as potential adviser to difficult home decor projects or the occasional home hair-care emergency.
I knew parents lie. All the time. They invent cute little stories, photoshop snot out of family photos, and enlarge their child's modest achievements to proportions even more unrealistic than a clueless single guy filling out the "penis size" section of an online dating quiz.
I was determined not to be the same. I love my kid, and am happy that he's a normal, appropriately-developed nearly-four-year old child with nice manners and a lovely smile. But there I was, making him perform for his supper (well, dessert) like one of those nauseating pageant moms on reality television.
So, why? Why the impulse to show the world how wonderful our kids are? For me, I think it's the lingering worry that my kid will develop some sort of delays or behavioural issue. When we first moved to Quebec, we plunked him into a daycare that was billed as bilingual, only to discover that the vast majority of kids and workers spoke little or no English. While the other kids sang French nursery rhymes, Pre-Schooler N would be off to the side, playing with trains.
His teacher, a bossy, earnest woman who proudly declared she had gone to school in English, expressed deep concerns about his development. Granted, she had to repeat it a few times, as the manner with which she masticated le langue de les anglophones reminded me of the way my aged grandfather used to work his way through a tough steak. She mentioned ADHD (every parent's nightmare), language delays and even used the word autism at one point -- always quickly backtracking and pointing out she was not qualified to make such a diagnosis. She simply repeated that there was 'something wrong' and that we needed to take him to a specialist tout de suite.
So we dutifully carted our son to Montreal, where he was put through a rigorous series of test by a very nice (and actually bilingual) specialist. She told us he needed to work on his ability to enunciate the letters d and g. That's it. No sign of ADHD. No sign of Autism. No sign of anything. His language comprehension even tested slightly higher than his age group.
She also pointed out that anglophone kids who went to French or bilingual daycares often didn't talk much while in that environment. It's confusing for them to hear words in an unknown language, and English words spoken in heavy accents with poor grammar. It doesn't make sense to their developing minds.
A month later we moved Pre-Schooler N into a home-based daycare that is predominantly English. He loves it there. His language skills are just fine, and they're great with him. But maybe that explains my brief descent into the world of utterly-annoying stage papa.
Either way, I'm quite finished with those impulses. Naturally, if my child suddenly develops the ability to chirp arias while accompanying himself on harp, only breaking for an elucidating interpretive dance during the third stanza, well, then all bets are off. But until then, he's my little tone-deaf shuffler, happily working his way through childhood with a toy train clutched in one hand, and my heart in the other.
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| This one is actually us. |
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