As we compete in the perfect parent Olympics, smugly congratulating ourselves on our child’s latest accomplishment or fretting over behavioral issues, it’s important to remember that much is outside of our control.
A tragic story in Sunday’s New York Times drove this point home. A young family was posing for a picture in the Central Park Zoo when a tree branch fell, killing the six month old baby and critically injuring her mother. I mentioned this story to a friend who told me a similar tale of a 13 year old girl playing on a swing set in her backyard when a falling tree branch hit her head and killed her.
I find both of these stories terribly upsetting, perhaps because they directly clash with my idea of the control I have over my children’s lives. I could do everything right – feed them only organic, in-season, not genetically modified whole foods, teach them good manners, foreign languages and music, expose them to art, culture and diversity and still a single tree branch can foil all of your best laid plans.
It reminds me of an expression one of my mother’s friends used to say. “No one escapes.” As a child I never really understood this concept. Her friend was a beautiful woman with two gorgeous brilliant children who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. As I’ve gotten older though, its meaning has become more clear. Everyone has their issues. My psychiatrist friend gives a better example, that most of us would not change places with our closest friends because we know all their problems. Their handsome, successful husband travels all the time rendering her a single mom or her seemingly perfect child has major meltdowns at home. When we really bend down and examine the grass, it suddenly doesn’t seem so green.
So the next time another parent smugly passes judgment on you or your current situation, try to remember that “No One Escapes”. They just haven’t had their turn yet, and when they do, try to look on them with compassion.
Sadly, this scenario is more common than it would seem. Families that do everything together and seem inseparable…. until they’re not. One family, for whatever reason, decides that the friendship isn’t working anymore and claims to be “really busy”, stop returning phone calls or worse still, stand you up for play dates. It’s slightly reminiscent of your dating days when you were being dumped.
I can’t believe she just did that!
Ahhh, those friendship altering moments. You know the ones, like when the friend you thought you knew and loved so well totally overreacts and spanks her kid in front of you, is rude to her nanny or one of your other friends. The behavior leaves you so shocked and appalled that you seriously reconsider the friendship.
We are often so surprised by the behavior that we don’t know what to do, but it changes the way we think about our friend. It could be subtle, along the lines of “I didn’t know she had such a temper” or drastic, along the lines of “I don’t think I’ll be hanging out with her again.”
Has this ever happened to you? What did your friend do and how did you handle it?