Serving the people of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee
Which is worse:Terrible 2s or terrible teens?James Pankratz - Special to Parenting The debate goes on. Parents line up on both sides of the issue to ferociously defend their position. The question is: "Which is harder: parenting infants, school-age kids, or teen-agers?" Usually parents answer the question with anecdotes about what age their children were when they caused the most hassle. Most of these stories are about teen-agers, who have the greatest freedom and, therefore, the greatest opportunity to get into trouble. After I had just become a father, an acquaintance cautioned: "Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems." I think this misses the point. The debate is really about which developmental stage places the most stress on the parents - how worried, exhausted, and/or depressed they are. It is not primarily about the objective behavior of the child. The two top contenders for this debate are infancy (defined here to include infants and toddlers) and the teen years. Most parents seem to feel that having grade-school children is the honeymoon stage of parenting. This is even better than most honeymoons, since this one lasts around eight years. This month we'll take a look at the viewpoint that raising infants and toddlers is the most demanding stage of parenting. I've organized the arguments under four major headings. Arranging for childcare Presuming that the couple is not independently wealthy or that one parent is not the vice-president of a major corporation, most two-parent families today have two wage-earners. If you're lucky enough to have a loving, retired grandparent with nothing to do living in a gingerbread house next door, your childcare problems are solved. However, most parents find that arranging for childcare requires the dexterity and flexibility of a juggler in a Barnum and Bailey Circus. We were fortunate to find the most warm, lively and loving woman to do in-home childcare for our first child. She was and is the ideal mother, someone who had raised a large family of her own. By the time our second son was born, she was no longer available. The picnic was over and the juggling began. The attack of the viruses As soon as a baby is born, announcements are sent out to the microbiology world that another motel has opened for business. Since babies and toddlers have few immunities built up, the sign on the motel always reads "Vacancy." For years our car was set on auto-pilot for our clinic, where approximately every three weeks we would go with the latest case of strep-throat, sinus infection, ear infection, etc. These trips were the direct result of the previous stressor. Childcare had shifted from in-home to a day care center. Day care centers are a motel franchise for germs. No more dreaded words can be heard from the pediatrician than "It's just a virus. An antibiotic won't help." This meant get ready to tough out the hacking, crying and throwing up for another week. One of the ways to measure how deeply you are immersed in this stressor is to evaluate the depth of your relationship with the local pharmacist. I got to feel that our pharmacist was part of the family. She greeted me by name and we exchanged details about family life during the past three weeks, while she filled the prescription for Amoxicillin, Augmentin, or Ceclor. Sleep deprivation My wife and I read many pamphlets and books about what to do when the Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized lungs of your infant or toddler bolt you up from a semi-sound night's sleep. One of these theories alleges that spacing your crib-side appearances at ever-increasing intervals of time will effectively condition your child to cry himself to sleep. This did not work. Ever. We concluded that the best way to handle the situation was to rock our boys until they fell back to sleep. We took turns. One night my wife was on-duty; the next night I was. That way we were not complete zombies; only partial zombies. What happened to us? A crisis can be predicted in the life of every marriage: when the twosome shifts to a threesome. Being a parent demands sacrifice. There is no way around it. What happens to a couple when they are confronted with ongoing illness, sleep deprivation, and time management stressors? Often they become irritable and start arguing. At this point couples may or may not need conflict management techniques. They definitely do need a break. As a therapist, I talk to new parents about recharging their waning battery as a couple. This stage isn't going to get any easier until it does, so in meantime get a babysitter and go out and have some fun together. And do it on a regular basis. It's the most unselfish thing you can do for you and your children. Next month: can parents of teens top this? (Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist for Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.) |
Copyright, 1997 by Catholic Herald, Milwaukee, WI
USA
chnonline@archmil.org