So, have your read the recent New York Times article on toddlers and iPhones? It's shocking and alarming! More and more parents (oh, ok, moms -- only one nameless man is mentioned in the entire article and we are not told how he handles his toddler's request) are giving their badly behaved children iPhones in order to shut them up! It's the 21st century version of plopping them in front of a TV! Only worse! Because it's interactive and kids like it better! It's damaging their developing brains! And deluded parents moms (colluding with evil marketers) pacify themselves by imagining some of this is educational for their children!

So, having kept on top of articles criticizing mothers for not being perfect and blaming them for everything that's wrong in the world the latest in parenting news, let me parse this for you:

• Letting your child ever, for one second of her life, touch an iPhone = bad parenting. You let your child touch an iPhone? Congratulations! You just caused brain damage. Your child will grow up to be a friendless alcoholic who is a drain on society. The collapse of Western civilization is entirely your fault, Mom.
• Having a child who is unable to remain motionless and quiet at all times in public without an iPhone = bad parenting. See above re: friendless alcoholic and it all being your fault.
• Wanting 10 minutes of quiet time, free from your child's demands = bad parenting. You must not really love your child if you are not constantly enraptured by them. Plus you clearly don't know how to set limits. Oh, and you're taking the easy way out. There's so much wrong with you, I don't even know what to say, other than: friendless alcoholic!
• Focusing your constant, developmentally enriching attention on your child for every single waking instant of your damn life, so that your child behaves to everyone's satisfaction without a minute of boredom and without ever touching an iPhone = bad parenting. Actually, the worst parenting. Helicopter parenting! (I wish I had a really spooky font for "helicopter," but that's okay, you can just read it in a spooky voice to yourself.) Your child will not only end up a friendless alcoholic, but he will have been so coddled he will be unable to dress himself, leading to an arrest for indecent exposure. Just you wait!
• "Free-ranging" your child so that they learn to entertain themselves without an iPhone = bad parenting. They will just steal someone else's iPhone while you are irresponsibly shirking your duty to watch them every moment (but the right way, you know, not by being a "helicopter parent"). Still, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that your child will not become a friendless alcoholic. But that's only because she won't live long enough. She will be abducted and murdered by a stranger or will drown in a puddle or will fall and break her neck. And you will deserve it. Don't expect any sympathy. You got what was coming to you, bad Mom. And we are all better off without the worthless criminal your child was sure to become.
• Using your own best judgment about the use of various tools and techniques in moderation = bad parenting. Stop being lazy and making excuses for giving your child brain damage by handing him that iPhone for a 15 minute car ride! There is a right and a wrong way to do things. And anything less than 100% perfectly right all the time will lead to friendless alcoholic, drain on society, end of Western civilization, etc.

So, how can you be a good parent? It seems hopeless. Fortunately, there are two options:

1. Provide your child with wooden toys. (And make sure there's no lead paint on those! Oh, and don't be too uptight about it, because nobody likes a killjoy). Also, provide developmentally appropriate books. (And do start with picture books. After all, you did read that article about how bad parents moms are pushing their kids into chapter books too fast, right?) Nothing with batteries, nothing with screens, no BPA plastic, no potentially toxic anything, no choking or strangulation hazards. But do that all effortlessly, because if you suck all the fun out of childhood, you are also a bad mom.
   
   Next, focus your complete, perfect, developmentally enriching attention on your children for some unknown ideal number of hours each day. Too much or too little and we are right back to friendless alcoholic. If you don't already know that perfect number, I'm not going to tell you; all good parents already know it. If you don't, you were clearly raised by wolves yourself, so there's no point. You're beyond hope, and so is your child. You'll have to skip to Option 2.
   
   Now (and this is the most important part) have a child who behaves perfectly at all times and entertains herself on cue in quiet and educationally appropriate ways whenever your perfect, developmentally enriching attention is not on her, and who voluntarily (but politely and without seeming uptight or brainwashed) refuses offers of other kids' inappropriate toys and effortlessly redirects them into fun, educational, developmentally appropriate play. If that sounds tough, it is. Fortunately, there's an easier way. Which brings me to...
2. Be a man. When fathers hand their kids iPhones, it's cute, because those silly men don't know any better. And besides, he's trying to train Junior to be an engineer! When fathers refuse iPhones and the kids throw a tantrum in public, Dad is being a tough disciplinarian who is raising an upstanding citizen.
   
   Be a man and no one will mention you by name in a New York Times article full of dataless speculation about things that might, maybe, in some unknown quantities be harmful to children (or not, but of course they are, we all know that). No one will criticize your sad inability to breastfeed. No one will picture your fatherly face when they read about a 12-year-old who can't operate an ice tray because his "helicopter parents" (read: mom) spent too much time with him, gave him too much attention or was too helpful. No one will imply that you are heartlessly shirking your duties or that you don't love your child adequately if you drop him off at daycare.
   
   Now, I know what those of you born with vaginas are thinking, "But I can't just become a man!" To which I say, sure you can. Halloween is just around the corner and I bet all those fake beards will be on sale soon. And let's face it, even sex reassignment surgery and a lifetime of testosterone supplements would be a hell of a lot easier than Option 1. Or you could, oh I don't know, use your own best judgment and trust other people to do the same. Oh, right! That would be bad parenting.

The school secretary looked at me over the top of her glasses. The look clearly said, "Oh. It's you again. The mom who can't be bothered to get her child to school on time." She knows my daughter and me, which is not a good thing in a large school like my daughter's where I am definitely not on the PTA. She knows me because, I'm the Chevy Chase of moms. Seriously, if I were a mom in a movie, Chevy Chase would play the role of me.

I used to have a different relationship with school secretaries, and a part of me wishes I were wearing a big flashing shirt with a picture of my college diploma on it. It would be my way of saying, "I know! I'm disorganized! But I graduated at the top of my class and went to a really fancy college. I'm super good at all school stuff, except the getting here on time part. Seriously, give me an essay to write on the use of theatrical metaphors in Shakespeare and I am so on it. I can even get an A+ in gym and wood shop, as long as a significant portion of the grade is based on written tests about theory. You would like me if I were a student here. You'd never have a single disciplinary problem with me, and I'd skew the standardized test scores up to make the school look fancy. It's just as a parent that I seem kind of sucky."

School secretaries used to like me, even though they had to write late slips. And I'm an obsessive record keeper, so I know the had to write lots of them. Over the years, my diary entries read something like this:

"Missed the bus. Late for school."
"Missed the bus again."
"Late for school again."
"Walked to school because I missed the bus."
"Got to school on time! But forgot to brush my hair and put on makeup. "

Still the school secretaries would smile and ask if I wanted to pick up my trophy/certificate/medal/savings bond/scholarship check while I was there. It was like being a student athlete, only without the being-good-at-sports part.

And today, I had really genuinely meant to be on time. It was school picture day, so I knew I was going to have to be on my game. My daughter wanted to wear her fanciest dress and have me do her hair in its fanciest style: pigtails. So, she was up on time, eating breakfast and I was focused. No TV this morning. No playing Beatles Rock Band. I combed her hair into two neat pigtails and we put on her favorite dress. Then she grabbed her baseball cap.

"I think that's going to mess up your hair for the picture," I said.

"No it's not," she said, and placed it lightly on top of her head, so that if she leaned forward, it would fall off. She removed it and said, "See?"

"Oh no!" I cried in mock horror. "The hair! It's crazy!" And I laughed, but Janie covered her face with her hat and started to cry, "No, it's not!"

"No, it's not. I was teasing."

"That's not nice."

"I'm sorry. I love you. And it doesn't matter how your hair looks anyway. You're awesome. Let's go."

So Janie mashed the hat down on her head for real, smooshing down the carefully placed pigtails and walked out the door, head down, still mad at me. As we approached the school, I checked her backpack and... Oh crap. There was the picture order form (not filled out) and the envelope for the money (with no money).

"Uh oh. I didn't fill this out or pay the money," I said.

"Oh no!" said Janie, "But Mama, I got dressed in my fancy dress and everything, and now I won't get my school picture taken!" Her lip started to do that quivery thing. Crap. The form says right there on it "No late payments will be accepted."

"It's ok. I can do it right now." So I find a bench outside the school and start pulling out the entire contents of my purse. I definitely have some kind of writing implement in here somewhere. Mini-golf pencil! Score! I fill out the form. Now for the payment. I'll just whip out my checkbook and... Out of checks. Damn. Ok, I'll dig around in my purse for money. Is there a voice coming out of my cell phone? Crap. I accidentally called someone. Ok. Deal with that later. I definitely don't have enough bills, but I do have a lot of change. In fact, five dollars of it: nickels and dimes and quarters, which I stuff into the envelope, which now weighs twenty pounds. This is when my disorganization pays. Literally.

Janie is wide-eyed with delight at watching me count so much change, and clearly relieved that I have saved the day by having barely enough money in my purse for the minimum picture package. "We're going to be late," I said, "I'm really sorry."

"It's ok, Mama," said Janie, and together we walked into the office.

"Reason for lateness?" the school secretary said.

"It's totally my fault," I said. Janie looked up at me and smiled.

"Mom late," she wrote on the late slip, frowning. She handed the slip to Janie, and I watched her bounce off to her classroom, her hat still smashed down over her pigtails, thinking it's not bad to be the Chevy Chase of moms, but I still do want that flashing shirt, just a little.

A friend called me last night. She's in the midst of some very messy office politics at work. She thinks her coworkers are being difficult. They think she's being unreasonable. Her boss thinks they're all wrong and they all think the boss is wrong. "Do you think I'm being unreasonable? Am I crazy or are they?" she asked. And I paused, because I've seen a whole lot of crazy at this point in my life and I've gotten a pretty secure grip on two things: the first is what I think is and isn't crazy, and the second (and more important) is that it totally doesn't matter.

She wanted to know the answer to the first part, and if I left out that second part, it was easy enough for me to answer: no, I didn't think she was being unreasonable or crazy in her interactions with her colleagues. I thought she had some pretty healthy boundaries and was sticking to them. But I didn't want to tell her that, because what I think doesn't matter.

I know because I've been in that place before: tallying up the yes and no votes in my favor. Sure, I could tell her she wasn't crazy. But her coworkers friends were busy telling them they weren't crazy either. So, she'd go in to work the next day and say, "My friend Mary says I'm not being unreasonable," and her coworker would say, "Yeah, well, my friend Tom says you are." And then she'd have to ask someone else in order to continue having the balance fall in her favor.

To really feel better, I've found that I have to be ok with where I am, regardless of how the score stands. So, what I really wanted to tell her, more than that she was being reasonable in this particular situation, was that it was reasonable for her to have her own boundaries, regardless of whether or not I (or anyone else) agreed with any given boundary at any given moment. But I found myself unable to articulate that part. Sure, it seems easy now that I have time and a keyboard, but it's a different story when I'm fumbling for words on the phone. And it seemed so hard at the time to put what I wanted to say into a nice neat little sentence, rather than launching into a really long philosophical treatise. So, what I actually said was the ultimately unhelpful external validation thing, "No, you're not crazy."

Then I thought, "But it doesn't matter what I think! Oh, wait. There's a program slogan, 'What other people think of me is none of my business.' That's what I want to say!" That's never been one of my favorite slogans, but it did state the crux of the issue in a nice simple little sentence. Oh. I guess that's why we have slogans in 12 Step. They're pithy and easy to remember.

I've had my share of frustration with slogans. They can feel canned. They can be tiresome. But some of them inspire me. Some I repeat daily. And some, even the ones that aren't my favorites, can come in handy sometimes.

A few days ago, my daughter Janie walked into the kitchen, which my frantic holiday baking had turned into an indoor winter wonderland, covered in soft mounds of flour and dustings of sparkling sugar.  "What are you making, Mama?" she asked.

"A pie for a potluck dinner with some friends," I answered.

"Mm," Janie said, "Is it a cherry pie?"

"No, it's apple."

"Is apple your favorite kind of pie, Mama?"

"No, actually my favorite is blueberry.  Although I really like cherry too.  I like both of those better than apple."

"Why didn't you make blueberry then?  Or cherry?"

"Actually, come to think of it, I've never made a blueberry or a cherry pie in my whole life."

"But you should make what you like!  Why haven't you ever made those other pies if you like them best?"

"Because I usually make pies for holidays and parties and a lot more people like apple.  Apple is Daddy's favorite kind of pie and Aunt Kim's.  And at Thanksgiving, apple is more traditional than blueberry.  It's what more people want to eat.  Also, I've made so many apple pies that I know I'm good at them, because I've practiced it a lot.  So, I know they'll taste good.  Hm.  So I guess I make apple because I know other people will like it.  But you're right, Janie.  I should try something new and make what I want to eat sometime!  I never even thought of it before."

"Mama?"

"Yes, Janie?"

"You're a weirdo."  And Janie giggles.

"Yep.  I think you're right about that," I say.  And I giggle too.

I'm a party pooper.  I'm a downer.  I'm no fun.  I ruin other people's good times.  (Because I totally have control over other people's good times, you know.)

You see, yesterday Mark and I had plans to take the kids to a pumpkin patch.  We were going to let them run around and jump off hay bales and find pumpkins and navigate a kiddie corn maze.  But I woke up a few hours into my night's sleep when one wet child tried to climb in bed with me and an hour later when another child sniffling from the tail end of a cold woke up early and was ready to start the day.  And, as people who don't get enough sleep will be, I was cranky.  Bite your head off cranky.  Stab you in the eyeballs with a fork cranky.  Blast your eardrums straight out the top of your skull with my screams cranky.  That is, if I could open my bleary eyes long enough to find you.

I decided that I needed to go back to bed.  And that was a good decision.  But there was that whole pumpkin patch thing.  Now, the kids didn't know we were planning it, because I'm no fool or at least not so much of one as I used to be.  I know that my kids get so hyped up about exciting events that they can't sleep.  (Not that they slept anyway on this occasion.)  And then they become sorely disappointed (read: wail all day as if the world has ended) if someone gets sick or it rains or the car blows a tire and we can't go.  So I rarely tell them what we're up to until we're up to it.

I knew that they were none the wiser, but it still triggered that whole party pooper speech in my head.  That whole "I should work harder and do better" speech.  That whole "Why is it that everyone else in the world seems to be able to juggle jobs and sleep and housecleaning and taking their kids out to one freaking pumpkin patch once a year and I can't?!" speech.

I knew those speeches were coming from a place of exhaustion, but they were still pretty persuasive.  (You do have a point there, crazy voice in my head, I can be pretty sucky.)  But I went off to bed anyway.  And hours later, when I woke up, all the crazy talk was gone.  I took my son out to a park while my daughter went to a friend's house to play and Mark took a nap of his own, and suddenly I felt like the most together Mama ever.  Amazing what a little sleep will do to turn the party pooper into the life of of her own party.

Image credit: Photo by DaveAustria.com on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

So, you know, I'm not really codependent.  (I hate that word anyway.  Sincerely I do.)  I just like to do nice things for people.  Really nice things.  Like that time in college when my boyfriend's parents were going to come for a visit and I helped out by vacuuming his carpet.  Only he wasn't actually my boyfriend, but I wanted him to be, and I didn't, technically, vacuum the carpet, I went a little overboard, which really was not my fault because I couldn't find a vacuum.

Ok, let me explain.  I was enamored of this guy I met my freshman year, and I was pretty sure that, if I just worked hard enough and did well enough, I could eventually get him to ride off into the sunset with me after which we'd live happily ever after, enjoying the ripeness of our golden years in our house with a dog and a white picket fence and grandchildren bouncing on our knees.  And one day just before his parents were due to arrive for a visit, I saw the perfect opportunity to prove my everlasting devotion and put him so deeply in my debt that he would have to consent to, if not ride off into the sunset, then at least go buy the horse.

He had tidied up his little ten foot by twelve foot room and was frowning down at the carpet remnant that covered the floor.  "Too bad I couldn't vacuum it," he said, "Oh well.  I have to leave for class.  What about you?"

"I don't have anything right now.  Is it ok if I hang out here for a little while?  I'll lock up when I leave," I said, slyly.

"Sure," he said and left for class.

After he left, I set off in search of a vacuum, thinking I'd quickly run it over his carpet as a surprise.  When I couldn't find any available (at least none that were working at the time; although I did hear tell of fabled vacuum cleaners that had been working just days before), I refused to give up.  I went back to his room, and as I surveyed it, I had a brilliant idea.  I might not be able to get up all the dirt, but I could at least make the carpet look better; I could clean the floor the way I sometimes took lint off a sweater: with tape.  So I wrapped tape, sticky side out, all around my hand, and on my hands and knees I got to work painstakingly clearing all visible debris from the carpet that no one asked me to clean.

When my soon-to-be boyfriend returned from class, I showed him the room with a flourish.  At first, he didn't notice anything, but given time (and sufficient prodding from me), he said, "Oh!  The carpet!  Great.  Thanks.  I guess you found a vacuum cleaner."  Suddenly ashamed to admit that I'd just spent the last hour all but licking his floor clean with my tongue as an act of devotion, I said, "Yes, I did.  Took like 10 seconds."

"Well, that was nice of you.  Thanks.  See you later."

Not the ticker tape parade in my honor it should have been, but I was laying that groundwork in my niceness.  (That wasn't codependent, right?  I'm pretty sure codependent would have been doing that on a much larger room he never asked me to clean.)  But folks, here's the important part: it sort of worked.  We dated for years.  And it's not my fault that we broke up because I couldn't sustain that level of working hard enough and doing well enough at things I was never asked to do or that he didn't work that hard or do that well in return.  Still, that's the kind of healthy, successful dating relationship that's totally going to get me published in Sexual Codependents Magazine Cosmo someday.

A few years ago, I was visiting my friend Ellie and was a guest in her house for the first time in my life.  I had just taken a shower and was standing in her bathroom, a wet towel in my hand, at a loss for what to do.  Should I hang the towel on the rack?  Sling it over the shower?  Hang it on the bar inside the shower door?  And should I fold it in half or lay it out flat?  Maybe I should fold it in thirds?  Should I throw it in the laundry room?  Or maybe there was some other way of handling towels that I wasn't even aware of...  These seem like small things, but they deeply concerned me.  What was the right way to take care of a wet towel?

Oh, sure.  I knew what I would do at home.  But I also eat in front of the TV, chewing with my mouth open and resting my bare feet on the coffee table, at home.  And that, my friends, is certainly not the "right" way to eat.  I was pretty sure that there was a way to hang the towel that would signal that I was raised by wolves and would bring shame to my entire family.  My parents would be greatly disappointed in me, knowing they had told me a million times how to hang a towel, and now, at this critical moment, I had completely forgotten all they taught me about how people ought to do things.

I was going to be judged and found wanting.  I was going to be unmasked for what I was: crude and thoughtless.  Ellie was going to walk into that bathroom, see that towel hung up in some clearly, horribly, offensively wrong manner and was going to think I didn't love her enough to take care of her towels properly.  I'd never be invited back.  Our friendship would grow distant.  All over this towel!  And even if — through a sheer luck, — I passed this towel test, I was probably going to use the wrong fork at dinner.  Or put my elbows on the table.  Or forget to make my bed in the morning (I don't make mine daily at home).  Or make the bed the wrong way.  Or put my foot square in my mouth over something.

There went my brain, dashing off down those rutted, well worn tracks.  I'd seen people in my life cut down and cut out for things like the way they hang their wet towels, and I'd been cut down and cut out for similar things enough in past relationships that such questions and worries had become a matter of habit.  Somewhere along the line, I'd gotten it into my head that there was a right way to do everything, and everything must be done that way, perfectly.  If not, what followed was judgment, shame, humiliation, rejection and abandonment.  Those thoughts were so routine, I never even noticed them.  But this time, standing there in Ellie's bathroom, with a little bit of recovery behind me, I finally caught myself on that race to Crazytown and laughed out loud.  For crying out loud, it's a wet towel!  And everything is going to be ok, no matter how I hang it up.

So, I hung up the towel, left the bathroom and joined Ellie for breakfast.

A big red C. There it was, heartbreakingly plastered on the front of the report I had worked for weeks on. I had painstakingly drawn a wombat on the special mottled pastel paper, neatly stenciled the title ("All About Wombats"), and enclosed it, along with the several pages of notebook paper that constituted my report on these marsupials (native to Australia!), in a plastic report cover. Under the C, in tidy teacher's handwriting, were the words: "I would have given this an A, if it were an individual project. I had to lower the grade because you did not work with the rest of your group."

I hadn't. It was true. The other two members of my group did their own report on wombats. I had stopped working with them at some point. I hated group projects. I wanted my group to like me, have fun and yet do things my way, perfectly, so the teacher would give us a good grade. In my secret heart, I knew the "right" way to go about things, but I couldn't boss them, or even imply that I knew anything, because then they wouldn't like me. But I also couldn't stand to see them going at it the "wrong" way. And I didn't want to jump in and help, because I'd end up doing all the work but not getting all the credit. (I mean, if the project succeeded due to my awesomeness, how terrible would it be for me not to get sole credit for it?)

Surprise, surprise! I just couldn't make all that work. My need for control conflicted with my need to people please. My need to please the teacher conflicted with my need to please my peers. My need for perfection conflicted with almost everything. So before my head exploded from the strain, I took the best way out I could see: I did my my own report, perfectly, and hoped the teacher wouldn't notice that whole "working with a group" piece. Of course, it was painfully obvious (and awkward) when my classmates shuffled nervously to the front of the class with me and we gave two separate reports. So, we each got credit for the work we did, not just on the project itself, but on our abysmal failure to work together to create one coherent project instead of two separate ones.

What I learned from that at the time was the very profound lesson: group project suck and I suck at them. From then on, I decided the best thing to do was to avoid group projects when possible. If that wasn't possible, I'd decide whether I'd be better served by silently submitting to the rest of the group or by cutting and running (and suffering the consequences).

Yesterday, I was confronted by a situation in which I may have to work with some neighbors (who totally don't do things right!) for the benefit of a child in our area. And I saw that throwing my hands up and saying "I suck at this!" or "I can't work with them if they're going to do things that way!" or "Fine, whatever, let them do a half-assed job!" is not what is going to benefit the child (although it does have the very real benefit of me not having to change). They want to help the child. I want to help the child. The child will be better served by all of us working together than by each of us stalking away to write our separate reports. So, it's time to use the tools at my disposal (including working the Steps around this) to make sure that this time, things aren't done perfectly or my way or in the way that makes people like me best, but together for the best result.

That's right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we're talking about Ben, "do no harm" means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What's more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn't always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

"For crying out loud, Kate," I mock-yelled at the TV, "It's hard to say no! Respect Jack's boundaries!" Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I'm getting better at the saying no part, at the "this is as far as I'm willing to go and as much as I'm willing to do" part. I'm just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!