Barnabas Monkeypants

Every parent thinks that their baby is not just cute, but the cutest kid on the planet. And that’s completely justified. I mean, when Kristen and I first saw Henry, all red and crying and covered in his own poop, we fell madly in love with him and immediately proclaimed him the most amazing thing in the history of the world.

But it’s just not realistic. The pedestal that parents place their children on is more than likely to come crashing down.

But nobody seems to want to admit it. They constantly think that their child is amazingly adorable. They think that their child is really smart. Or really creative. Or really something.

The world, however, seems to even everything out. For every child with amazing singing talent there is one that can’t carry a tune. For every child that is above average there is one that is below average.

I, myself, am having that problem, and Henry’s barely two months old. When we took him for his first doctor’s visit, his weight, length (I don’t think you can say height until they can actually stand up), and head circumference were all in the 50th percentile. Our doctor proudly proclaimed that he was perfectly average.

He was joking, of course, but I was crushed. Average? Henry? Our beatiful Henry who already could do so many great things?

Last week when he went in, his head and weight were still right smack dab in the middle of the graph, but his length went up to the 75th percentile.

Now we’re talking! Our boy is showing those chart creators who’s boss!

This is all positively silly. After calming down a bit, I quickly realized that I don’t really want him to be at the top of those charts. We would have a 3-foot long, 25-pound baby with a head the size of a watermelon. Where would we find the clothes?

But Kristen and I have already talked about this and about how we’re going to deal with praising him and how to manage his ego. I don’t want to tell him all the time that he’s brilliant (even if he is); instead, I want to tell him that the specific things he did were really great. If he draws a really good picture of Spider-Man, I’ll be sure to put it on the refrigerator and explain all the great things about it. If he gets an A or a B+ (or, yes, maybe even a B) on a test, I’ll proudly put it on the fridge, too, but I’ll tell him that he got those grades not because of his natural smarts, but because he worked hard at the assignment or studied well.

Am I crazy? Sure. But I just want to praise him for actual achievements and not just for some blanket “he’s so smart” or “he’s the best athelete around” or, more likely, “his comic book awareness is off the chart.”

Of course, after he’s out of earshot, Kristen and I will be more than happy to hug each other and tell each other about how brilliant he really is. Even if we don’t want him to hear it, we sure do.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Barnabas, Kristen, Poop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.