Three Kids, Two Books, One Bowl of Jello-O, and a Spine

Two Books. That’s what it took to raise my three children. The first book was a big mistake, the second was a lifesaver.

My girls were born in 1963 and ’64 and the popular book at that time was Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. Forget my mother’s advice, what did she know? She raised me and my sister to be fine upstanding adults, but she was no Dr. Spock. She only raised children the way her mother and countless mothers before her had. She snapped my lips if I sassed her; Dr. Spock, on the other hand, entreated mothers to listen to their children, understand why they did what they did (even sassing adults) and treat them as unique individuals whose motives needed to be examined and fully understood.

As a child, my hand was slapped if I reached for a hot stove. According to Dr. Spock, one must move the child away from the stove and distract her with a toy. Hence, the child never learned that some things in this world are dangerous.

Baby and Child Care was my bible. I devoured it and lived totally by its precepts, always trying to understand the psyche behind my girls’ motives. My mother swatted my behind first and asked questions later. As a disciple of Dr. Spock, I asked so many questions I never got around to the swatting part. Consequently, I wasn’t a very good mother.

Kids need rules and boundaries and a good sense of right and wrong. They don’t need an adult friend, they need an adult who’s actually a parent.

By the time my son was born in 1972, I still believed in the teachings of Dr. Spock, but learned soon enough that perhaps the good doctor didn’t know everything about rearing children. My mother would have used his book only to sit me up higher at the kitchen table where I would be told to eat what was on my plate. (Thank heavens my father wasn’t as strict about making me eat things I didn’t like!)

When my son was sixteen, he was a handful so along came the second book, Tough Love by Phyllis and David York. Tough Love taught me that I had more power than I ever imagined. That although I couldn’t control his actions, I could control how I responded to them. It told me that I had rights, too. Who knew? It said that I had the right to live in a peaceful house, an intact and clean environment, and have a night’s sleep without worry of where my son was. The concept was simple and I wished I’d learned it when the girls were young instead of letting them twist me into knots wondering how I should respond. Tough Love taught me that I could give my son a curfew of eleven o’clock and if he wasn’t in by then, the doors would be locked and a blanket and pillow placed on the porch for him. What happened? He never missed curfew from the first night the rule went into effect.

Baby and Child Care turned me into a bowl of Jell-O, constantly afraid of making a decision that might harm my children’s psyche.

Tough Love gave me a spine.

The moral of the story is . . . well, I’m not exactly sure. All three kids turned out to be excellent adults, people I’m extremely proud of, not because of, but in spite of, my parenting.

Books can be powerful. Be discriminating in what you read.

Quote of the day: Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them. P.J. O’Rourke