The opposite of helicopter parenting is not hands-off parenting but, as I frequently observe in myself, a kind of ostentatious lassitude towards parenting that takes more effort than helicoptering itself. The only thing it’s useful for is rationalising some aspect of parenting about which I feel sheepish, which this week happened to be preschool.
There’s a fancy gym near my house that has a three-mornings-a-week programme for two-year-olds. I hate this particular gym chain, which I’ve joined three times in the past 10 years and every time cancelled after paying about $200 per swim.
Nonetheless, the kids’ programme looks great. The teachers are nice and the playroom is beautiful, with plate glass windows flooded with light. It is also unreasonably expensive and in order to justify even contemplating enrolling my two kids there I had to persuade myself I wasn’t doing it for them, I was doing it for me. This wasn’t about putting them in a ritzy preschool; it was about finding an excuse to rejoin the gym, never work out, and take the occasional shower in which I’m not knee-deep in bath toys – with preschool as a mere afterthought. That’s how dedicated I am to not pampering my children.
As it happens, my excuse-making was unnecessary because it didn’t work out. There is overcharging and then there is this: a set of baffling black marks on the preschool calendar, which, when I enquired about them with the coordinator, she explained were “vacation dates. But you’re welcome to pay $200 a day for spring and summer camp during those weeks when our staff don’t come in!”
“How is that not paying for the same thing twice?” I said and she did a tinkly laugh, then said: “Oh!” I lost the will and said: “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get back to you.” And then I cancelled the whole thing.
For about three seconds, I worried I was stymying my children’s chances of future success. Then I remembered we were talking about kids spending three mornings a week sticking one bit of paper to another and occasionally glancing at the alphabet. I booked them into a beat-up space they already go to for art class once a week, where they know everyone and which gave me a two-for-one deal. There’s no sauna, but it does have the advantage of being in line with my rigid no-frills approach to parenting.
When toddlers go bad
Two years after the birth, and I’m still on lots of child-rearing mailing lists. Most of their newsletters offer advice about nutrition and teeth cleaning, but there’s an occasional behavioural orthodoxy that pulls me up short.
One of the biggest sites sent out a message this week about what to do if your toddler hits you or is being obnoxious in your general direction. You should, it advised, say something like: “You upset Mommy.” Or: “You hurt Mommy’s feelings.” Or: “Mommy feels bad when you do that.” Mummy feels bad indeed. I’ll say Mummy feels bad. Mummy has come over decidedly peculiar and is about to morph into Margaret Rutherford.
Yes sir, that’s the way
There is one American convention I prefer to the British: addressing strangers as “sir” and “ma’am”. As with its equivalents in France, it makes life easier and mildly more pleasant, streamlining interactions in streets, cabs, restaurants and shops.
In England, of course, we address all strangers as “er”, as in: “Er, do you have this in a bigger size?” and “er, is this train going to Waterloo?” I think half the reason Brits don’t like public interaction is they have no workable mode of address.
I saw a woman tapping her way down 72nd Street with a white stick on Monday and said: “Ma’am, do you need help?” I felt like a million dollars.
