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The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting - Softcover

Berk, Brett

 
9780307381385: The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307381382 ISBN 13: 9780307381385
Verlag: Harmony Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Drawing on more than twenty years of experience working with young children, the author furnishes candid advice, handy checklists, and hilarious anecdotes designed to reveal how patience, consistency, and keeping one's emotions in check can help parents deal with virtually any challenge and assist youngsters in gaining the structure they need to develop and learn. Original. 40,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BRETT BERK, M.S., Ed., worked as a classroom teacher and a preschool director, and now acts as a research consultant to some of the world’s biggest producers of kids’ media, toys, and consumer products. He and his partner of eighteen years divide their time between New York City and a house in upstate New York.

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1

Sinking the Stockholm Syndrome

Going Out

Our friend Angela smirked guiltily as the waiter gave the cocktail shaker a final tremor. "I haven't done this in ages," she said.

Tal squinted in disbelief. "Had a martini?"

I squinted too. "Thought about your second martini before starting your first?"

"No." Angela picked up her glass with both hands. For someone who'd once been nicknamed Guzzles, she looked out of practice. "Gone out on the town."

"You call this 'on the town'?" Tal gestured at our surroundings. We were in a brand-new, brightly lit, sports bar/pool hall in a former warehouse in the middle of Helena--which, though it seemed to have only slightly more residents than our apartment building, is apparently the state capital of Montana.

Angela shrugged. "It's as close as they come around here."

"So then, this is your regular place? You come here and work the felts? Knock around the old stripes and solids?" Tal had had a pool table growing up, and in the rare circumstance in which we found ourselves around one, he took pleasure in tossing some lingo around.

"Sure. I've been here before. Of course. Though it's been a little while." Angela took another, slightly less cautious sip. "To be perfectly honest . . . it's been a long while." She nodded. "It's actually my first time here since Seymour was born." She sighed. "Truth be told, I guess it's the first time I've gone out at night at all."

My jaw tried to drop, but I held it shut. Seymour was Angela's son--her nearly three-year-old son--the one successful product of her failed relationship with a failed musician, a drummer named Lawrence, who had pretty much abandoned her when she'd discovered she was pregnant. She had subsequently left Brooklyn and moved here, back home, to the allegedly warm embrace of her family. But while her parents assisted her financially--paying for Seymour's day care, and allowing her to work a low-paying job teaching English to female juvenile offenders--the limits of their support ended there.

I glanced at Tal. "I guess we sort of suspected as much."

Angela set her shoulders. "What do you mean?"

"Well, that twenty-minute monologue you delivered while we were waiting for our drinks? It was an annotated history of Seymour's recent bowel movements."

Ever the polite one, Tal perked up. "Not that it wasn't interesting. Really. I never knew that thing about the protective enzyme around corn kernels that keeps them from being processed by our digestive system."

"It would have been more interesting," I said, "if we weren't eating corn salsa."

Angela sighed. "Okay. I know. I should get out more. But it's so hard to motivate. I don't have any real friends here. I'm not dating--unless you count Lawrence dropping by for sex once a year when his band is in town. Plus, I miss Seymour during the days when I'm at work, and he's only up for a few hours once I get home. I want to spend it with him. I don't want to miss anything."

I nodded. "Fair enough."

"You don't mean that."

"You're right. What I meant to say was, you sound like you're suffering from a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome."

"How's that?"

"You know. When you fall in love with your captor . . ."

"I know what it is. But he's not my captor. He's my son. It's my job to take care of him--all the time. Plus he's just so cute . . ." She got a doelike look in her eyes. "I don't want to leave him, even for a second, especially at night, when he's so tired and sweet. We've developed our little evening routine, where I give him his dinner and his bath, and we talk about our days. Then we get into bed and I read to him and we snuggle. I curl up around him like he's a little stuffed animal, and . . ."

I cleared my throat, trying to break the spell of their insularity. I had seen this situation many times before: parents' unwillingness, or inability, to take time for themselves--to have a real adult life in addition to their role as a mom or dad. It came up in all kinds of families, from all manner of backgrounds, but it seemed to be more troubling for parents who felt isolated--physically, personally, emotionally--regardless of whether they were in a relationship or going it alone. Feeling stranded, their child becomes more central than they should, creating the potential for problems all around.

I moved my glass aside. "We need to revise your routine, before you become one of those bitter prairie spinsters--Willa Catheterized. Or worse, embarrass Seymour when he's a teenager by trying to accompany him to his prom. You need some You Time."

Angela hemmed and hawed, coming up with excuses as to why she couldn't develop a social life. And though we tried rebutting her, she was tenacious.

"He's too young," she claimed.

"He's almost three. If this were the 1890s, or Malaysia, he'd have a full-time job by now."

"I have no sitters."

"Have you even looked? You can't be the only person in Helena with a kid. There are referral services, online postings, high-school bulletin boards. Or what about one of the young ladies you work with?"

"They're all criminals."

"Well, some of them are also mothers, right? Plus, isn't it part of your job to rehabilitate them?"

Angela looked down at the table. "Um . . . There's one other thing." She lowered her voice. "I'm sort of still breast-feeding . . . ?"

I clapped my hands together. "Now, we're getting somewhere." When pushed as to why a parent can't separate, I've found that this dirty little secret often emerges. And as with most other practices about which we're embarrassed or defensive--watching soap operas, driving an SUV, obsessively checking our BlackBerrys--everyone has their own set of rationalizations as to why they can't stop. One of our friends claimed, without an iota of proof, that continuing to breast-feed gave her four-year-old son "social confidence." Another used the circular argument that she couldn't stop because her boobs got sore if she didn't let her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter nurse. Another said she let her five-year-old suckle only on special occasions, like at night--every night. Yet another said she was planning to stop but was waiting for her son to let on that he was ready. He could type at this point; I suggested he send her an e-mail.

I laid out my theories on breast-feeding for Angela, hoping she wouldn't go all La Leche League on me, but instead of agreeing or debating, her doelike gaze returned. "I just like the way he looks at me when he's nursing," she said. "It's like we're in love."

I tightened the cords in my neck. "Thanks for the honesty. But I think it's best if we all pretend you didn't just say that. The two of you will have to work that out later. In therapy." I folded my hands. "So, any other excuses why you can't leave the house?"

Angela thought for a moment. "Where would I go?"

"I don't know." Tal shrugged. "Out? Here?"

"Here? Why?"

"For fun?"

"You call this fun?" Angela sighed. "Anyway, who would I have this said fun with? Who would even want to have fun with me? I'm a thirty-six-year-old underemployed single mother. I'm overweight. I'm financially dependent on my family. And I apparently have nothing to talk about but the quality of my son's shit."

"If that's going to be your...

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Verlag
Harmony Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307381382
ISBN 13 
9780307381385
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
242
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Verantwortliche Person
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