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.

I have a secret. I have been grieving over my children since, at times, before they were even born. Now that's not the way it's supposed to be, is it? I'm a mama, and mamas are supposed to be joy and love and acceptance for our whole lives long, from the moment of conception onward. At least, good mamas are. If we have expectations that aren't met, we're supposed to toss them out for all we do have, without a hint of regret; we're not to pack them away gently in the box with the baby clothes, stored in the attic because we can't quite bear to part with them yet.

My lowest moments in parenting -- the ones I want to stuff away in shame and never let my children or the world see -- are the ones where I couldn't accept that my children were themselves rather than my vision of them. They're the times I grieve the loss of what never was, and now go on to grieve the grieving.

My son Austen was only a few weeks old when I held the Worst Mother in History awards ceremony and handed myself the trophy. The qualifying event took place around 2 or 3 a.m. when my son was just a few weeks old. (No one else made it to the ceremony at that hour, but that was ok; I had no competition -- I never do -- since I am always running against myself, beating my previous lows. Those imagined, perfect other moms don't get to run.) Unlike other babies -- the TV babies, the parenting book babies, the babies with good moms who did things right -- my son wouldn't sleep anywhere but in my bed next to my body, which my (ex) pediatrician said was BAD and DANGEROUS.

So, on the night of my first worst moment as a parent, I nursed him for what felt like the two hundredth time and gently placed him in his bassinet for the two hundredth time, only to have him scream like the fuzzy warm blankets were full of blood-burning fire scorpions, the same way he had every single time I'd tried this for the twenty or thirty nights in a row. And that scream broke me. Bone tired and viciously angry, I picked him up roughly, looked him straight in his tiny screaming face and whispered, with venom and hatred in my voice, "You are a bad baby!" Oh. My. God. What was I saying? Was I insane? I was berating a tiny baby for... Being a baby. I broke down crying in exhaustion and shame, took him into the BAD, DANGEROUS bed, and was silently grateful that he was too tiny to see that I had been disappointed in him. Already. At a few weeks old.

When Austen was a year old, we went to a mama and baby music class. Now that's the kind of thing good mamas do, right? There I was, enriching my child's mind already at one. But he was having none of it. A class full of toddlers is never a model of disciplined attention, but even here I could see he was... different. He didn't have any interest in the bright, perky teacher or the other kids or even the musical instruments, which used to make him flinch and frown. He'd wander away from the circle where everyone else was engaged and stand staring out the window. I'd try to coax him back, thinking, "Why can't you be like the others? What am I doing wrong?" I was so traumatized by the feeling of something off, that we didn't sign up for another session.

A year later, when he still wasn't speaking and psychologists and therapists were starting, amidst a battery of tests, to whisper the word "autism," we tried a Gymboree class. "He needs to work on socializing with other children," they said. Again, there were all the other kids, enraptured at story time, while my son crawled through the same tunnel over and over and over again, alone. I'd get in the car, strap him into his car seat and sob quietly over the steering wheel, not wanting him to see that he'd disappointed me again before he'd even reached the age of three. And again, when the session ended, I couldn't bear to go back, but by that time it was clear he needed more than a Gymboree class anyway.

It was around this time that I found out I was pregnant with my daughter Janie. I was a little late and had been feeling a little queasy, so I took a home pregnancy test. My husband and I wanted a second child, eventually, but right then we were completely overwhelmed by Austen's needs. We weren't planning a pregnancy and had been using birth control. I took the test: thinking it would set my mind at ease, but fearing it would not. When that second line came up to indicate I was pregnant I sobbed, big heaving sobs of sorrow, the kind a mama is never supposed to sob when she finds out she's carrying the precious little life she's going to love and cherish. Already, before she was born, Janie disappointed me. Just by being. Being at the wrong time. I didn't feel worthy to be her mother.

I love Austen. He brings a richness and beauty to my life that wouldn't have been there if he had been the child I expected. So I don't want to admit that there was ever even a moment when I didn't love and cherish him exactly as he was, when I wanted something different, when I wanted him without the autism and his sensory issues I hadn't planned or expected. I love Janie. She's brought joy to my life that I couldn't have imagined. So I don't want to admit there was ever even a moment when I didn't want her at all or at least not when she happened to come. I don't want to admit that I had to grieve Austen's autism or grieve Janie's conception before I could arrive at the love and acceptance mamas are supposed to give as naturally as breathing. Yet I did. Shh! Don't tell anyone.

Now any parent with a child old enough and mobile enough to reach such an entertainment center can describe to you the carnage sure to ensue when you introduce a baby or toddler into the scene. So, needless to say, when the child arrived, the predictable happened: The beleagured mother tried to smile and say thank you while wrestling the squirming child, eager to destroy those pretty, shiny, eye-level boxes and discs. And Thom, the very person who designed this disaster-waiting-to-happen, stood rolling his eyes as the situation unfolded and whispering snidely to the camera, "Control your child!" (As if a firm "no" would suffice.) Of course, the child was just doing what he was supposed to do. And Mark and I laughed, because at that age (or, as evidenced by last week's fish tank incident, even beyond) there is no "control your child"; there is only "lock everything dangerous or precious the hell up and hope for the best."

I think of that "control your child" often when I'm out with my children, because I can hear people thinking it. My son is currently obsessed with things that go fast, so he has to go fast too. He does not walk, he runs: out of his bedroom in the morning, into his bedroom at night, out to the school bus, back into the house, through stores and public places. There is one place he does not run: parking lots. I try to park at the curb whenever I can, and when that's not possible, you'll know it if you see us: I am the one playing tug-o-war with my son's arm. He lurches forward, leaning almost horizontal to the ground, eyes closed and face scrunched in with straining, grunting with anger and frustration, moving his feet 1000 times per second, while I walk gripping his hand and leaning backward to counterbalance. My daughter walks serenely by my side.

When we reach the sidewalk, he's off, but not too far. Every ten feet or so, he'll stop and jog in place, looking back to make sure I'm there: his anxiety about crowded new places forming a little invisible leash back to me. Then he'll shoot off again. I'm thankful for the anxiety, because frankly, I'd be hard pressed to catch him, and would have to resort to yelling things like, "Hey, come back here and look at this Nintendo DS I bought for you!"

Yesterday, I took the kids out shopping with me (President's Day=two kids out of school) and we ended up in a seemingly interminable line. It took the kids a few seconds (and a few frustrated reminders from me) before they settled down. My son ran around and around me, orbiting like my own little moon, while my daughter stood still as a statue just in front of me. I wondered how many people were still uncomfortable, how many people were thinking "control your child!" I wondered if I was the only person there who saw two happy and well-behaved children, doing what they were supposed to be doing.