But before I zonked out, I watched some of the snippets of these videos and realized what an outstanding parent one can be of a single child. I was so attentive, so attuned to her needs. So playful, so involved.
At just a little over G's age, she could sing the alphabet song completely by herself (without prompting) and count to 10. And at 2.5 years, she could sing William Butler Yeats' poem, Wandering Aengus, along with me. I had forgotten how whip-smart she was due, I'm sure, to undivided mommy attention.
And then there is G, who I think is a pretty smart little boy but in comparison to his sister at the same age is like Rain Man. I don't even want to consider what M will be like.
I could mope about this but there is nothing to be done about it. And I keep telling myself that G and M will benefit from the influence of siblings. I'm not sure how at this point, other than learning how to do irritating things that drive mommy bonkers.
2 comments:
I always say that I was a good mom for about one year...the year before I got pregnant with Lily. I did crafts and we read books and went to storytime and explored the world.
But I try to comfort myself by thinking that if I only had one child, I probably would have made them a neurotic overachieving a-hole, because all that attention and pressure their whole life? Yikes.
That's so funny that you wrote about this, because I was just telling someone how bad I feel that Audrey and Jonah don't know nearly what Bailey knew at their respective ages, and I know it's because of the sheer amount of time I was able to dedicate to educating her in our daily lives.
It's especially noticeable with Audrey. I have to repeatedly swallow my pride and shake off my embarassment when I see her come out of her 3-year-old classroom still struggling with identifying letters C-G (she knows A and B).
Bailey could identify every capital letter before she was 2 1/2. But then, she and I spent hours upon hours reading Alphabet books, working Alphabet puzzles, playing with Alphabet blocks... And what did Audrey get? She got sent to 3-year-old preschool 2 months before she turned 3 so that someone ELSE could teach her the alphabet.
Yep, I could let the guilt eat me up, too. But you're right, what good would it do me -- or my kids?
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