When we traveled to China for Julia's adoption back in 2003, it was after a long and difficult wait that encompassed a SARS delay, CCAA slowdowns and misplaced paperwork in the "matching room" in China. During the wait we had plenty of time to prepare every detail of the nursery, pack and repack our luggage a thousand times, and talk, talk, talk about what it would be like to finally be parents. We had it all worked out...or so we thought. Should calm reasoning, gentle protestations, and threats fail us, we had a secret weapon--one so powerful it was guaranteed to stop a tantrum, argument, or mis-deed right in its tracks! We, ladies and gentlemen, are masters of the look. The look is the penetrating stare (almost a scowl) which both Mark and I have used on a regular basis as teachers. In an educational setting, the look can say, ""If I have to ask you to take out your math book one more time you can kiss your recess goodbye," without the utterance of a single sound. We figured with this surefire secret weapon in our back-pockets, we'd be ready to hit the ground running as parents. When we were finally about to board the plane from LA to Guangzhou and were mere hours from holding Julia in our arms, it occurred to Mark that he better start practicing using the look in parenting situations. Naturally we realized it would feel different using the look on our own beloved child than on a dear but less than charming student, and we wanted to be prepared. So Mark thought it would behoove himself to do a little role playing. We discussed possible scenarios in which the look might be especially handy and in this pic Mark is responding to a future Julia (say 16 years old) attempting to go out with friends. The caption here should read: You actually think you are going to leave the house wearing THAT?!! (Quick aside: it turns out this particular exercise was pointless. We have long since decided we aren't actually going to let Julia leave the house unsupervised until she is 25 anyway!).
The thing for Julia is that she has not one but two teachers for parents. She plays school as often as she plays just about anything else and is already assigning Mimi homework. And now, at age 3.5, she has already mastered the look herself. Not only is the look quickly becoming useless against her, she has been working on honing her technique to such perfection that sometime in the very near future we may well be at risk of having our best weapon used against us. Sigh. This is what happens when your kids are smarter than you are.
1 comment:
Oh yeah, she's 3 1/2 all right. You know, I really liked 2 with Peter. Three however, was not my favorite age with him. Although I never got "the look", I did get the flat-out "NO" or the tantrums that left both of us in a sweat. Fortunately he grew out of that stage just long enough for a brief respite until Caroline came along with her 2ishness (which BTW stared at 1.5 years-your friend is right!) I think it is a law of nature that your first child is there to lull you into a false sense of security so that you THINK you've got this parenting thing down. So you get another one. That's when your confidence in your parenting ability breaks down.
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