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 Dad on a LarkA blog by Rand Richards Cooper, on parenting baby Larkin
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October 17, 2007
She's So Smahhhht!
 Before we had a child, Molly and I used to yuck it up over parents who boast about their kids. Couldn't they see how wrongheaded, how tacky that was? One friend breathlessly updated me on what grade level her son was reading at, as each year the little Einstein raced further ahead of his peers. Another spent 20 minutes one time discussing his 18-month-old daughter's "intellectual interests." Meanwhile, the girl was sitting in front of us, dismantling a red wagon with the savage zeal of a Visigoth, but Dad didn't even crack a grin. Molly and I knew we would never go around touting our baby's brilliant development. And not just because it was embarrassing, but because we believed it wouldn't be good for our child, or for us. And then came Larkin, and again we turned out to be hypocrites. We'd catch ourselves gaping in wonder when our genius girl figured out how to hold her sippy cup. We performed linguistic gymnastics to parse her gobbledygook into this or that precocious utterance. We found nothing amiss in exclaiming, "Larkin, you grew teeth — you're so smahhht!" A little shine of irony on these observations kept them safe. As long as we're making fun of boasting, we're not boasting ... right? The serious point is this: In a country as obsessed with competition as America, how do you resist thinking about life as a contest or race, with winners and losers — and your child's development as a way of equipping herself for it? This temptation arises all the time. I'll be at the playground, talking with a mom about our toddlers. "What does she weigh?," we'll ask each other. "Is she talking yet?" You try to keep it casual, but inwardly you're assessing how your child stacks up. When Larkin at one year rated 90th percentile for height and 75th for weight, I thought, Excellent — tall girl, strong girl! And when her head circumference measured off the charts, I joked with our pediatrician about the monster XXL craniums that abound in my family, but the truth was, I was pleased. Big head = lots of brains, right? It's ironic, of course, for such a big head — mine — to contain such a stupid idea, but there it is. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with taking delight in your baby and her growth and change, and in this sense, paying attention to measurements is simply a way of reassuring yourself she's healthy. But it's also the first time you submit your child to a set of numbers, assessing her against her peers, and being pleased — or concerned — about the results. Some friends of mine have a son who's been slow to walk, slow to talk, slow at every developmental milestone. They worry; is he going to be behind all his life? I'm sure these worries say more about us, and our expectations, than they do about our children, and it's important to keep that in mind. If you grew up in the educated middle-classes, it's easy to cave in to the obsession with ability and intelligence. And behind that obsession lies a Darwinian vision of society. Wanting your child to be ahead — or, at least, not behind — can leave you with some uncomfortable thoughts. You end up making comparisons, even when you don't want to. And comparisons cut both ways. Recently I watched Lark's 3-year-old second cousin, Matthew, write out his name in neat letters with a pencil on a sheet of paper. Hmmm, I wondered, will Larkin be doing that in a little over a year? What if she can't? I recalled then that my cousin, Matthew's dad, had commented recently that I speak a lot of baby talk to Larkin. I should consider not doing that, he'd suggested (he's a middle school language teacher and a bit strict); better to use big words and build her sentence power. Oh no! I thought. I'm an indulgent, lazy, negligent, baby-talking dad, who only cares about having cuddly fun with his little monkey! I'm not building her sentence power! But what put these worries over the top was an email update from an old friend, Susan, who lives in Boston, and whose son, Blake, was born seven weeks before Larkin. Susan told me she'd just come back from meeting with Blake's teacher to discuss the "infant and toddler curriculum" in his class. She also reported that Blake had regressed in his toilet training. "So now it's back to company in the bathroom, and reintroducing the potty." Yikes! Regressed in his toilet training? The only time Larkin gets near a toilet is when she tries to climb up on it in order to pull the framed map of the Caribbean off our bathroom wall. And a toddler curriculum? I could see it now: Blake would grow up to be one of those big-city kids I remembered from freshman year in college — savvy, self-assured kids who are never at a loss for words, and seem to have read three times as many books as anyone else, and go on to become movie directors and hedge-fund managers. How would Larkin ever catch up? Eventually I managed to calm down a little. Molly reassured me that no curriculum was necessary at this point. And my sister reminded me that I myself as a toddler had been famously, well, belated with language. True enough, I can remember my parents years later, laughing to recall how I sat there smiling beatifically and repeating "Gwah, gwah, gwah!," my all-purpose utterance until I was about 3. And, in the long run, that didn't prevent me from writing books, or even from living in big cities with all the smart kids. I'm going to try to keep that in mind and let Larkin be Larkin, a person unfolding according to plan — her own. Editor's Note:   Rand Richards Cooper is the travel correspondent for Bon Appétit, and is author of a novel, The Last to Go, and a collection of stories, Big as Life.
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