Where the heck IS that Parenting Handbook??

I felt like a jerk. A complete and total jerk. As I sat in the pediatric opthamologist's office, four years ago with my two year old daughter I should have been quietly grateful. And I wasn't. Clearly around me were children with bigger problems than ours. Although we hadn't had the exam yet, I was fairly certain of the diagnosis for Darling Daughter (D.D.), good ol' fashioned myopia, nearsightedness, whatever you wanted to call it, she was going to need glasses. Sure enough, after the eye exam, it was clear glasses were in our future. Not today, D.D.'s eyesight was not that bad, and as the opthamologist remarked "it's not like she needs to see to drive a car.", but glasses were in our future. I wasn't surprised. I have deplorable eyesight. Truly deplorable, when I say I am blind without contacts it is no exaggeration. I impress opthamologists with my -10.00 prescription, they don't see it very often; and while impressing Matt Damon is good, impressing an ophthamologist is bad. I am treated as a novelty. In the genetic lottery, D.D. had lost and instead of getting her father's impressively good eyesight, she got mine. As a single tear crept down the side of my cheek, I felt like such a failure as a parent. And worse, I felt like a jerk for being so upset. Outside in the waiting room were children whose eyesight was limited at best and usually coupled with other developmental speech and hearing problems. Should anyone feel sympathy for me for crying over glasses? Puh-lease!

And this morning it all came back to me; the reasons why glasses seemed like a horrible thing. Fortunately D.D. just began wearing glasses last year at age 5. Despite my anxiety about being the only kid in pre-K wearing glasses, it was no big deal. Quite the opposite; many of her friends begged for glasses of their own & wanted to borrow D.D.'s. Kindergarten however, was a whole new world. This morning it was meltdown city. She didn't want to wear glasses; kids were teasing her; she didn't want to hear how cute her sparkly pink glasses were (huh? was she nuts? didn't she know how fantastically lucky not to be saddled with the horrible oversized tortoiseshell frames of my youth???); and most of all, she did not want to be different. I felt her pain, I had lived it myself in elementary school. I didn't really know what to say, all I could do was hold her as she cried. My thoughts bounced back and forth between "I'm going to strangle the little monster in her class who has been teasing her" to "where IS that parenting handbook?? what chapter is this??" and "why does this happen when my husband is out of town??" We were getting into big issues here: self-esteem and societal pressure to conform were just a few things lurking beneath this conversation. I was totally unprepared, it was a lot to handle at 6:23 in the morning! Maybe it WAS time to start those karate lessons I'd seen; the promise of self-confidence and inner strength was awfully appealing at the moment!

As a pregnant person I walked around with clear notions of parenting: "First you get the baby to sleep through the night, then you deal with the terrible twos, and then you work through the teenage years. Everything in-between is the easy part like practicing spelling tests and driving to soccer practice." Does anyone else remember driving home from the hospital with your first baby and thinking "Are they crazy? Do they REALLY think we are qualified to take care of this baby?? " So if any of you find that Parenting Handbook, you know the one I mean, that answers all the hard questions let me know. I sure would like a copy. Until then, I'll guess we'll just have to make it up as we go and hope we don't screw it up too badly.