Parenting Fails
Once upon a time, when my second child was about two, he would randomly do this thing where he’d kind of roll his eyes back in his head. It seemed to be sporadic and we weren’t sure if it was on purpose or not. We accidentally got it on video when he was eating one day, and I showed it to our pediatrician at his next scheduled visit. She said she didn’t think it was anything serious, but sent us to the pediatric neurologist to rule out some type of seizures.
We get to the pediatric neurologist office, and of course they’re lovely. They’re asking me questions and they gave him a toy hourglass with beads in it to play with while they measured his head and looked at his eyes. As the NP is writing something down, my child showed me the hour glass and said “this wook just wike somefing that mommy have!” I had no idea what he was talking about, because I didn’t have any hourglass toys that I knew of. I clarified “it looks like something I have?”
He nodded confidently “uh huh! It just fo grown ups!” I went through the card catalog in my brain of anything I might have that’s just for grown ups. Honestly, I’m not that wild, most everything in our house was safe for kids except maybe the stovetop, fireplace, or alcohol. ALCOHOL. Did he even know about alcohol? I don’t drink that often, maybe just a glass of wine now and then. He definitely knew that was just for grown ups because I wouldn’t let him try it. Ohmygoodlowered he thought it looked like a wine glass!
So we’re at the NEUROLOGIST to see if my TODDLER was potentially having SEIZURES when he mentions that a toy looks like MOMMY’S WINE. Could there be a worse time or place for this revelation? Perhaps not. I was simultaneously impressed with his attention to detail and mortified that the doctors were going to think I had a drinking problem that led to his (what was now clearly going to look like a) neurological issue.
I laughed it off and tried to listen to the doctor. She saw the video of the eye roll and found it fascinating. She asked if she could take my phone and confer with another doctor in the practice. I said of course. She came back in, said the other doctor was also puzzled, but while she was out of the office she ran into a medical student who also wanted to see it. I said of course. In my head I imagined they were all in the hall deciding if they should call CPS now or wait until we left.
There was no consensus about the eye rolling. All the professionals found it baffling and curious, but not too concerning. We scheduled an EEG just to make sure there was nothing funny there. As expected, it came back normal.
This experience is just one of the hundreds of times that my kids have absolutely humbled me as a parent. Some of the time it’s because they’ve outed me for losing my patience or saying a bad word, or telling grandma I said a book was too expensive and she could buy it at the bookfair instead of me (only partially true!). Other times it’s telling medical professionals that the first thing they thought of when they saw a toy was mommy’s wine. We’re all just surviving day by day.
