And The Guilt Goes On

I'm telling you, it's a goddam miracle that my grown son has not gone on a killing spree or something, considering I did every last thing wrong parenting him when he was young. For one thing, I learned just today that you are not supposed to ever ask your kids, "How was your day?" when they get home from school, especially when they are in grade school. It puts too much pressure on them, or something, I didn't read the article any further because of all my sobbing, but there was something in there about the kid "caving under all your longing." I asked him that every single day, and my "kid" is now 30. I can't possibly fathom the damage.

I also plopped him in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street in his little baby rocker, thinking, as was the conventional wisdom in those days, that I was getting him on the fast track to learning. Okay, so he was reading before he started nursery school, which he started a year early because he was already reading, but now he is addicted to his cell phone and that's all my fault, apparently, for getting him "hooked on screens" so early.

But the very worst was that my husband and I, horror of horrors, made our baby sleep all alone, in a crib (in another room if you must know, although it adjoined our own), instead of bringing him into our bed and holding him close all night, like the proponents of attachment parenting do these days. How this impacted him is hard to tell, but I bet it's not good.

I'm going in the hot tub now.