Don't Worry, Be Happy?
I remember a night when my husband and I walked down the street in our local downtown area with our kiddo swinging between us, holding one of our hands with each of his. He wore a huge grin as he asked us to swing him up and off the sidewalk again and again, just like when we push him on the playground swings. In my memory it was a summer evening, maybe one of those Friday nights when the downtown shops host an art walk. We encountered a young man walking alone in the opposite direction. He noticed the happy kid, smiled, and remarked that we must be doing parenting right.
On another day, I took my son to lunch at the local McMenamin's (a pub chain) and got him a grilled cheese sandwich with fries. He had the iPad to entertain him, and I'd brought a book to keep myself occupied. He chowed on that sandwich while pumping his little legs beneath the table in a carefree swivel, absorbed in YouTube videos. A woman of older middle age sat at the table next to ours and looked at us brightly. "I've never seen a little boy so happy to be eating lunch," she said. I was glad that she didn't chastise me for letting him use an iPad.
A lot of family members comment on my son's sunny demeanor. My sister-in-law said, with satire in her voice, "It's too bad he's so depressed. You should get him checked out." He sometimes sings a little song at home, with his own made-up melody, that consists of the words "happy happy happy." My husband thinks these qualities are a direct compliment to my parenting. He believes that I set our son onto this path when I stayed home with him during the first four months of his life. I don't remember being particularly happy at that time—quite the opposite—but I gave our baby as much love and security as I could muster.
Only the most neurotic parent could worry about their kid being too happy, and yet here I am, wondering if it's his natural disposition or if he's just happy that he gets so little discipline at home. Maybe he smiles because he's the cat that ate the canary—a kid who has his parents wrapped around his finger. We have rules and standards for behavior, but they can be slippery. Other kids who come to our house run to tattle when they hear my son say the word "hell" (which he does sparingly). While I explain that it's sort of not okay—but also not a big deal—I wonder if our family is an overly tolerant outlier. My son is not allowed to say the worst of the cuss words, but I can't be bothered to care about the lesser ones.
Other types of uncouth behavior concern me more greatly. The main ones, right now, are fake gunplay and fat jokes. I've made my sentiments about these clear (or so I think), but they keep recurring. I'm afraid this exemplifies a hard truth that I don't know how to really set a rule and enforce it. At the beginning of every school year, while filling out a questionnaire where his new teacher asks what disciplinary methods we use at home, I feel stumped. The only thing I can come up with is "we threaten to take away his video games." That's the harsher end of the spectrum. On the more wishy-washy end, my husband will tell him, "You'd better stop or I'm going to come up with some kind of punishment." I shake my head disappointedly when I hear that, but I have nothing better than to give the kid my best Stern Mom Look and a voice to match.
He usually responds with proper contrition to my Stern Mode, but without additional consequences, the unwanted behavior usually resumes in the next hour or day. He still bounces his body on the couch, makes finger guns while playing with me, and tries to make me laugh with fat jokes about some character named Queso Caseoh (whom I just looked up and discovered is a real Twitch streamer who's a little overweight). I don't think any of these portend terribly for his future. Joking about people's body types is a slippery slope that I intend to thwart as much as possible, but I understand that he's seven and his peer group thinks a lot of dumb things are funny. None of his behaviors have translated into treating actual people disrespectfully or perpetuating violence. His playful finger guns most often represent flare guns from Poppy Playtime instead of guns that shoot bullets. Still, I'm ashamed that I can't stop some of these habits altogether, especially when I've encountered several parents who say that guns are a "hard no" in their homes. I feel like I should be as strong as they are.
We've been particularly easygoing at home since school let out for the summer. We still need to get up early in the mornings for work and day camp, but in the evenings, we let movie and gaming time stretch out in tandem with the sun's expanded presence. There is no firm deadline for getting him into bed now. We have put a pause on home study time, even though his dad and I agreed that we should keep that going over summer break so his academic skills can improve before he enters second grade. The pause has been somewhat intentional on my part. I'm nearly always the parent who has to wrangle him to the table for math practice and then to the tub for bathing. After I work all day and cook dinner, I run out of mental energy to keep my son on an orderly schedule.
"Good parenting is hard; bad parenting is easy." I read that on a randomly presented Instagram post the other day, and unfortunately it stuck in my head and got me feeling defensive. I'm sure that my husband and I take the easy way out by failing to implement obvious consequences, and letting him eat ice cream and watch Goat every night. Our son doesn't know yet how to swim, ride a bike, or tie a lace-up shoe. But he's kind, funny, and actually pretty good at listening to his parents. And it's a privilege to have a joyful child.