Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Ray answers a pair of questions on parent peer pressure.
Paul:
How old does the child have to be before you can openly discuss with other parents how much you despise one of your kid’s peers?
It feels weird to say to another parent, “See that kid over there? He’s a total asshole,” when the kid you’re alluding to is 12 years old.
Taylor:
I'm sorry, this won't be funny or creative because I am not funny, but here goes. I just recently became a parent, and my nine month old daughter is not showing signs of crawling yet (she wiggles her legs while on her tummy and can hold herself upright, but won't go forward or backward). How do I avoid not freaking out internally whenever I think about this? I want to give her the best life possible, but I don't know whether I'm doing something wrong or she's just not motivated or what. We're getting early intervention involved, so at least hopefully we're bringing in people who are far more experienced than us on this, but I just want her to succeed.
These seem like wildly disparate problems, but in fact are linked by the central truth of major moments in your time as a guardian/oppressor. But let's go in chronological order.
Nine months is a bit early for your legacy holder to be locomotive, at least according to our former pediatrician, who was also the author of the timeless advice, "You have to really try to break a baby because they're incredibly resilient as long as they know you care about them and their welfare." Ours was the opposite problem, in that little Zarathustra was actually walking at nine months and moving purposefully at 10, which creates its own serenity issues; try bolting from a dead stop on the couch during a game because the keeper of your good name is heading toward the glass table face first. But it's OK to worry enough to get answers from a pro. It's when you worry without information that you're screwed. If you check with your friends alone, they will only know what their little hyena did in a similar situation (and often they will lie or gasbag and say that their child was doing triple Salchows at the neighborhood ice rink at seven weeks). That's why your pediatrician is helpful, even if there's an up-charge with phone advice. Their knowledge will be yours, and your peace of mind will be exchanged by freakouts about the little scorpion yanking on power cords. Every day is just a tale of panic with a different hat. Get used to it, and move on to the next one with a clear head.
As for the problem of admitting that you hate a 12-year-old to other parents with 12-year-olds, well, that's peer pressure you don't need either. Don't take the bait. Let someone else be the parent who gets talked about behind their back. Your observations about another kid being a gastric ejector will inevitably get back to the offender's parents because nobody has an unspoken thought anymore, and then you've got lava lapping at your trouser cuffs in the schoolyard. Catching your intemperate snarls about other kids' feral natures is what you have a spouse for, or at least someone at work who doesn't know or care about any of your friends. If you need to intervene about your rogue sperm's choices in friends, do it subtly, by pointing out that Beelzebub's behavior may be condoned by his parents but not you, and if you can do it without referencing Beelzebub at all, the better. And if Beelz's attitude is what bothers you without your kid mirroring it, don't sweat it. As our sainted mother-in-law liked to say, "It's not my dog." Just don't spend any time around the offender. You have enough assholes in your own day-to-day. Why seek out ones a third your age?
The point here is, other parents can be a support system but their utility is limited. Make friends, not resources. If you must hang out with classmates' parents, do it over a beer. You'll find quickly enough that you'll get bored talking about each others' kids, if only because you're such a colossal bore when you talk about yours. This has been Minor Dilemmas for this week. Now go away.
