I’ll tell you, nothing quite starts a day off like a kid puking the night before. Because it is too early the next morning when you bleach the toilet and sink to rid it of the puke germs. And then, only then, do you drink your coffee before returning to the bathroom. Accordingly, the day should resume successful–unless you are me and your fancy electric toothbrush is identical to aforementioned puker’s toothbrush. If you are unlucky and/or absentminded, you will not notice said puker has left his toothbrush next to your own on the bathroom sink, thoughtfully charging it on your identical charger, and you might brush your teeth with the puker’s own toothbrush.
I’m waiting to feel bad but it hasn’t happened yet. In the meanwhile I have enrolled in a program to obtain a teaching certificate. I’m overly confident in the essay testing portion, as only a writer can be. (Is “be” a preposition? No, I don’t think so. See, one ought not be so cocky. I don’t even know what a preposition is or amounts to–there, now I think I’ve done it.)
I’m equally confident in the teaching arena. It is the multiple-choice questions that I over-think. Grownups who make paychecks should be exempt from silly tests in lieu of practicum. Or even if they don’t make paychecks–a mom who is at home shouldn’t have to waiver between a)wipes, b)diaper, c)rash cream, and d)powder, but it might cause her to second-guess herself if she’s offered all four and can only choose one as less than necessary. Some days you need the Desitin. Some babies aren’t roll-y enough to require powder. In a car on a road trip I’ve been caught wipe-less and diaper-less and found a way to MacGyver my way to success (though the details escape me, much like I hope the toothbrush incident does, eventually).
The teaching certificate is to come in handy should our local public school need me to fill a more permanent, qualified position. It hasn’t happened yet, but a few rules are changing in our state regarding teaching, so I’m trying to stay ahead of the game. I also keep at the back of my mind this morbid (or practical) idea that should something bad ever happen to our main breadwinner (not me), I will have a backup plan. I’ve never actually had a backup plan career before, but it seems like the responsible thing to do.
So I am also contemplating putting together a job resume, one that will be woefully short, since stay-at-home mothers don’t get to list their work as professional. No one wants to hear it–people who pay money don’t want to hear about your nightly forays into the bathroom to assist puking children. They don’t think it counts as professional experience. This is why stay-at-homers also feel the ridiculous pressure to somehow keep a foot in the professional world while attempting to feed babies in the middle of the night. This is why it takes Jesus himself to assure us that yielding our “relevance” in the world for the sake of a child is an okay–nay, holy–thing to do.
He chooses the weak things to shame the wise, so my resume is bound to impress Him, if no one else in this world.
I will also say this, having substitute-taught: the professional world has indeed forgotten what children are, because they are often treated as miniature adults. They are adults-in-the-making, future world-shakers. But they are sponges right now, which seems like a logical, child psychology kind of thing to know. They are not supposed to be adults and therefore ought not handle many things, including extended screen-time and limited outside play-time, self-monitoring cell phone usage. Exposure to extrafamilial ideologies is mind-bending–so what makes us think it’s healthy to introduce a thousand alternatives? My instinct is that people used to know this, but now they do not. A child’s mind is not fully developed. Who are the experts here, if not parents who recognize it?
Kids aren’t ready for mature content, and I don’t mean explicit language. They are not ready for adult life. Would you put a hammer in their hand and expect them to build a house, even if they wanted to? Of course not–at the very least you would wait till they’re strong enough to hold a hammer. Then you might send them to trade school for some lessons. What I’m trying to say is we have little patience for children to be children. We want to drop a seed in the ground and see a flower in bloom, but this is not how growth happens. Growth happens when we water and weed and prune back and wait on seasons.
We can’t feed them hours of screen time and shrug it off as nothing when it’s making new neuro-pathways in their brains and replacing healthy, respectful behavior and activities. We can’t circle the topics of suicide and bullying and stranger danger and drugs every year and assume they get it because we’ve had the “hard conversation”. The truth is, suicide and bullying are unthinkable. A child can’t comprehend the kind of despair that lives in the heart of man. Racism and sexual vulgarities–these are not part of one’s vocabulary unless an adult put it there in the first place. And so it goes, intentional misguidance by grown-ups dressed up as responsibility, when actually the grown-ups are just too impatient to water and care for our precious seedlings.
And I guess this is why parents need to excel at their job all the more, even if it sometimes feels like it just amounts to sitting in the dark, waiting to clean the toilet. You are actually a behavior scientist, loving littles and studying everything about them. Your resume won’t sing, but your expertise is solid. This is what makes a good teacher, I think. But we will see if the multiple choice test agrees.
