Parenting is an Art and We Are All Out of Poster Board

Though I am fairly certain I've done nothing awful enough to lend best-seller status to my children's future memoirs, I have made my share of parenting errors.

When my son was about four, our late afternoon walks took us past a slowly-decomposing possum carcass every day for a week. I realize in hindsight that  a smarter mommy would have just changed the route, whereas I was caught off guard, day after day after day, by my toddler's precocious questions about life, death and decomposition.

I ad-libbed, veering wildly between Eastern, Western and agnostic philosophy, with some cold, hard, forensics on the side.  "The possum becomes part of the earth, and then a flower might grow in that spot and then there is a little bit of the possum in the flower," I might say one day.  The next day he would ask me if possums go to heaven and I was back to square one.

When my daughter was in third grade, I patiently and clinically, and without consulting a single book, answered her questions about human reproduction, with a firm sense of my own superiority to all of those squeamish, prudish parents who perpetuate the myth that this is some kind of parenting challenge.   

Only I forgot the part that goes, "Oh, and by the way, this is something that kids should learn about from their parents and not from you."  The calls started coming in within 24 hours.   

The point is, I am not up for any parenting awards that I know of...  But I had, until recently,  a few  categories in which I privately held myself up as worthy of modest acclaim.

Arts and crafts for instance. I doubt there is any family in the Midwest who can match us glue stick for glue stick. Over the years, we've amassed a collection of buttons, felt squares, glitter, glue sticks  and construction paper that could pay for a year's tuition at a prestigious art school.

Whenever my children have an inspiration or an assignment, I head immediately to the crafts store, gathering up supplies with little thought as to how much it is going to cost or how I am going to get 15 pounds of glitter out of the carpet. Our home has always been a full-time art studio, where nothing is deemed too ambitious for my little Picassos.

After all, I say smugly to the parents of all the other creatively-stunted children, "you can't spoil a child with art supplies."

As a result, my children have come to expect to be supplied like Christo at a moment's notice. 

Which, as it turns out, does not go on the plus side of the parenting ledger after all.

This was made screamingly obvious during our most recent School Project Emergency.

School Project Emergencies are those assignments, which for one reason or another, are assigned within minutes of being due and virtually always require the purchase of supplies.

But I am not a complete sap. If, for example, I had tickets to a sold-out reading of one of my favorite authors and had less than 45 minutes to drop off a collection of neighborhood children, feed the ones that belong to me, shower, dress and get out of the house, and if, for example, that was the moment my seventh-grader chose to tell me that I had to take him out right this minute to buy poster board for a science project that was due the very next morning - I would put my foot down.

"No," I would say. "There is no way."

But..."I need it," he whines. "It will only take 10 minutes."

"No," I say again.  But this time, I add a full logistical explanation of why a trip to the store is out of the question.  This goes on for about the amount of time it would take to get in the car, go to the store, buy the poster board and return home. I employ every possible mode of persuasion short of a Power Point presentation to make my case.

He is unmoved.

I, on the other hand, feel myself weakening by his subtle use of terms like "failing grade."  Logically,  I know that he is too obsessive conscientious a student to fail anything.  I also know that we have 15 different kinds of giant, poster-like paper products among our art supplies,  any one of which could reasonably substitute.

But we don't call him Boy, Esquire for nothing. By the time he has finished his closing arguments, his college  scholarship opportunities are flashing before my eyes.

How can I expect him to turn in a  poster on cell structure on anything less than high-quality, freshly-purchased poster board?

It would be like trying to construct a simplified animal cell without any mitochondria.

And so, we compromise. I buy the poster board and he will not spring any more last minute requests on me.  At least not today.

Photo: Christo's Simplified Animal Cell, in pink.

Comments

[Foolery]

Ducky sheets. Next time he does that he has to use his childhood ducky sheets as a substrate (or Thomas the Tank Engine or Barbie or whatever will embarrass him most). That'll larn 'im.

[Sarah is Ok]

This is lol funny, but I'm wondering who the favorite author is. B/c I'm nosy.

[suburban kamikaze]

David Sedaris, and he was great...

[Sarah is Ok]

OMG, you're so kind--you answered. He's someone who's been on my list for a long time to read. Since I'm turning into such a fan of your site, I may have to actually pick up one of his books and, gulp, read it. I swear, I'm not an idiot; I read. But I sometimes have to make my 2 year old get his own cereal (he usually ends up eating it off the floor like a dog and with the dogs) just so I can read all these new blogs I've just discovered (could I be more white imperialist? I discovered these...).

[sue]

I got you beat on the explaining human reproduction thing. When my daughter finally pestered it out of me, I began to speak - and started to laugh. And couldn't stop.