ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

One of the things about being a mom is that you always do your best parenting on other people’s kids.

Before I had kids, I watched carefully how other people were raising their kids. I took notes on what I liked and I took a whole lot of notes on what I didn’t like, and made mental plans to see to it that my own kids avoided those negatives. Co-sleeping anxiety? Nope, Harley has always slept in her own bassinet or crib since birth. Irregular sleep patterns? The day Harley was brought home from the hospital we began using techniques to instill in her mind that nighttime is for sleeping and daytime is for being awake. Eating pickiness? We introduced a variety of bitter, commonly disliked foods into her diet early on and kept incorporating them into her meals until she started to like them. So far Harley will eat almost anything.

Unfortunately, for every thing I’ve done right as a parent, I’ve probably done two things wrong. Today one of those things I’ve been doing wrong came full circle and suckerpunched my stupid ass. When I got Harley out of bed this morning, she toddled into the living room as usual and turned on the TV. Only today something was different. Today we couldn’t find any of her Teletubbies or Signing Time or Disney movie DVDs; she must have gotten into them yesterday and lost them. She began freaking out.

As toddlers go, Harley isn’t all that prone to throwing fits. She’s a pretty good kid. But as I watched my daughter crouched in her pajamas by the DVD player screaming and frantically hitting buttons in her attempts to get it to play some cartoons, I realized I had failed her horribly. I’ve been letting her watch too much TV.

So, time to fix this. It’s out with the Teletubbies, in with the puzzles and games and coloring books and outdoor play sessions. We’ve unplugged the TV altogether for now so she can’t turn it on herself. I think I’m going to start taking her to playgroup twice a week instead of once a week. Wish me luck.