Growing in both directions

The other day, a video popped up in my Timehop — the app that shows you pictures you took on the same day in past years. It was a video of Eli at about 19 months old eating a particularly gooey piece of Passover cake at our Seder. Chocolate was smeared all over his face and hands. As everyone watched, he experimentally opened and closed his fists. His chocolate hands made a suction sound. He smiled broadly, said "Uh-oh" and then clapped his hands while we all laughed.

Watching the video made me smile, but it also made me think about what would happen if Eli did that at the dinner table today. I'd probably be horrified and annoyed. I'd rush to clean up the mess that Eli should have known better than to make. Eli would probably end up ashamed and crying.

Like most 3-year-olds, Eli has placed himself firmly in the camp of Big Kid. He can "Do It Himself." He "Does Not Need Your Help." He "Knows That Already." Last weekend, we were at a bar mitzvah where during the cocktail hour where Eli decided he was definitely, absolutely hanging out with the crowd of 12- and 13-year-olds and not with Mommy and Daddy. He made his position definitive by giving us the classic You're Embarrassing Me face and saying things like, "Mom, don't stand near me!" and "Dad, stop following me!" (These are direct quotes. Phil is "Daddy" when it's 5 a.m. and Eli wants Daddy to come into his room and play with him, but "Dad" in front of Eli's 13-year-old friends.) This past weekend, we were at Coney Island and Eli was so insistent that he was going on all the rides By Himself that he didn't even want me to follow him up to the gate to hand the ticket to the operator. "Don't follow me!" he kept saying. "I'm going by myself!"

So, at Eli's insistence, I have been thinking of him as a Big Kid too. Months ago, I discovered sort of by accident that Eli could dress himself. Up until that point I had been wrangling him into his clothes every morning while he was distracted by Chuggington on TV. But one day while we were in a hurry I jokingly said, "I'm going to get dressed, you get dressed too!" and then he turned up completely clothed, down to the socks.

Now, my expectation is that Eli dresses himself every morning. But it's never that simple. Some mornings he is "racing" Phil to get dressed and it takes twice as long because he pauses frequently to make sure that Phil hasn't "won" yet. ("Daddy, are your socks on yet?!") Some mornings he's goofy, pretending to put his pants on his head or his socks on his hands. Some mornings he claims to have "forgotten" how clothing works ("It's too hard! I can't do it! I don't know how!") and in frustration throws his "kid" all over the floor. (The first morning I laid out Eli's outfit for him, he laughed and said, "Mom, you made me a kid!" So now instead of telling him to get dressed we tell him, "Go put your kid on.")

Now, I have a master's degree in child development, and I should know that preschoolers don't always develop in a reasonable, linear fashion. Just because Eli can dress himself one day doesn't mean he doesn't genuinely need some help the next.

But I see getting dressed as a logical step in the natural progression of things: You are not wearing any pants because you took them off at some point during the night (don't even get me started on that) and you just took off your underwear to pee, therefore you should go put on some fresh new underwear and maybe some jeans while you're at it. But Eli doesn't see it that way: I am about to construct the world's most epic castle out of magnatiles and if I detour to my bedroom to get dressed it will ruin my vision! Nakedness forever!

Then last week I spoke with an amazing pre-K teacher who works in a Reggio-inspired school where they don't follow a formal curriculum and it's all about following the children's leads and nurturing their interests. She felt really strongly that a lot of what we expect prekindergarteners — and students in general — to do in school is developmentally inappropriate.

"I don't expect my students to raise their hands before they speak. Do you have to raise your hand before you speak?" she said. "When you hold a baby, they're going to grab your nose and pull your hair. Is a 4-year-old going to do that? No, because a 4-year-old has gotten that out of his system. So why should we expect a 4-year-old to sit perfectly still at the meeting area 'criss-cross applesauce'? Just because they're going to do it later in school doesn't mean they have to start doing it now."

As she talked about her 4-year-old students I was thinking about my 3-year-old, about how I'm already afraid that school will be hard for him if he hasn't learned to stay still or listen quietly or sit criss-cross applesauce at the meeting area. I told her that sometimes when I'm reading Eli a bedtime story at night and he wants to say something, he'll actually raise his hand.

I'm not sure when my expectations for Eli shifted, when I decided it would no longer be OK for him to play with his chocolate cake or goof around while getting dressed. I'm not sure when I decided that he needed to be prepared for kindergarten, let alone prepared now.

But talking to this teacher made me realize one of the great ironies of parenthood: Just recently, I was so amazed and proud that Eli could get dressed all by himself; now, only a few short months later, I'm supremely irritated that he won't do it.

So if there's one thing I want to keep in mind these days as Eli careens toward 4, it's this: Eli, you're a big kid, and someday you'll be even bigger. But you don't have to start right now. Sometimes it's still OK to play with your chocolate before you eat it, to lay boneless on the bed while your mom stuffs your socks on your feet, and most importantly to sing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song at the top of your lungs while you ride your scooter like Evil Knievel down the sidewalk. I love you when you act like you're 13. But I love you when you act like you're 3, too.

In defense of work

Phil is an engineer with Metro-North Railroad, and Eli is a 3.5-year-old boy who loves trains, so at our house we talk a lot about how Daddy works on the trains. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I had no idea if Eli knew what I do at work all day, so I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me like he was 13 instead of 3. "I know you're a writer," he grumbled.

I got a little thrill when I heard him say it, because I don't often give my job description as "writer." It sounds vaguely pretentious, for one — remember how Carrie Bradshaw used to flutter her eyelashes a little when she said it, like she knew writing a sex column for the fictional New York Star wasn't quiiiiite the same thing as writing for the Times? I write for the New York Teacher, so...they're both NYT, right?

But it's a little bit hard to explain to Eli the other things I do: "maintain the website," "send email and text messages," "stop and chat with colleagues on the way to the bathroom." So "writer" seemed like a safe bet.

Every evening I try my hardest to pump Eli for information on his day at school, and every evening his patience for my questions is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I try open-ended questions — "What's the funniest thing that happened at school today?" and basic ones — "Who'd you sit next to at lunch?" Still every nugget I do get seems like the Holy Grail. (To date the most extensive story Eli has ever told about his new school was about the time that Courtney bit Evie's sleeve and "they are not best friends anymore.")

The other night, to my surprise, Eli asked me for the very first time about my day at work. As it happened, I'd had a bit of an exciting day because this guy stopped by:

(I did not stay after to get a selfie like some of my coworkers evidently did. Darn it.)

Eli somehow knows that Barack Obama is the current president, so I told him that a former president had come to work and I had gone to see him. (His response to this was, "But I didn't see him because I was in your belly," which I think means that he thinks Clinton was president when he was still in utero, which made me feel sort of old because at this point it sort of feels like Clinton was president when I was still in utero.)

Then he asked if I get to eat lunch at work (yes) and if I get to sleep (no, but sometimes I wish I could). "But you have to sleep because you'll be tired if you go to the late-stay room!" he insisted. "At work," I sighed, "everyone goes to the late-stay room."

This conversation made me realize a couple of things. First of all, as much as I'm interrogating Eli for information about his day, I should be encouraging him to ask me about my day, too. (#AskHerMore!) I could be telling him, "Today at work I was writing about a school I visited in Chinatown," or "Today at work someone shared cookies with me and made me very happy." (Except then he'd probably ask where his cookies are.)

Second of all, like any working parent I have a complex relationship with my job. (And I won't really get into all the working mom guilt now because I've written about it before.) But when I was talking to Eli last night I felt something I'd never felt before when discussing my job with him: I felt proud.

I'm proud of the work I do. This week my story about the theater teacher who inspired one of the stars of Hamilton was the cover story in the New York Teacher. I put together a campaign calling on Senate Republicans to do their jobs and hold hearings on Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. (File under things I'd never thought would be in my job description: Writing mean tweets directed at the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yes, I did make that graphic myself, thank you very much.)

I don't always like my job, but I do like having a job — and that's the part that sometimes feels like I'm supposed to keep it a secret, like any real mom is supposed to prefer to be home with her kid. I like wearing business casual clothing and tasteful jewelry that no one is going to yank off. (Unless I get mugged/slashed on the subway. Har har.) I like going to the coffeemaker in the morning and logging into my computer and checking things off my Outlook task list. I especially like visiting schools all over New York City and getting to write about the amazing, dedicated, innovative educators we have in our public schools.

(I also like having a wall in my office on which to hang all my race bibs. But I digress.)

I do not love commuting for two hours every day. I do not love racing out of the office at 6 p.m. only to get home and rush Eli off to bed the second I walk through the door, most nights without even changing out of my tasteful work outfit first. And sometimes I feel a little twinge when Eli occasionally by accident calls me "Miss Erica" instead of "Mommy." (I take comfort in the fact that this probably means he spends 75% of his day at school going, "Miss Erica! Miss Erica! Miss Erica!")

I have never missed a class party. Or a parent-teacher conference. When Eli is sick, Phil and I usually split the day so that both of us get to make appearances at our offices and one of us is always home with Eli.

I know that motherhood is about choices. I know that stay-at-home moms get as much grief as working moms do and we should all stop shaming each other and end the mommy wars, blah blah blah. I know that no one out there is actually judging me for working (...is there?) But I've been thinking about this a lot lately — in fact, it's one of the reasons I haven't posted in a few months. (The other reason is I got really heavily back into reading fanfiction after the X-Files reboot. No, I'm just kidding. Mostly.) There's this vibe out there sometimes that if you're doing anything that takes any time away from the time you spend with your kids, it has to be monumentally important or lifesaving or empowering and sometimes my work just isn't. (Mean tweets notwithstanding.) I don't necessarily have occasion to gush about work (although I guess no one really does, unless you're Lin-Manuel Miranda and everyone wants to interview you because you're a goddamn wizard genius), and it can sometimes feel like unless you are Loving Every Moment of your job you should quit because YOLO. But the other day in my Timehop/Facebook Memories there was a status update from six years ago (when I was a teacher) that read: "Rachel hopes someday she'll have a job where she won't get called a stuck-up bitch. By a 10-year-old." So by that standard...I've already won.

When Eli started his new school a few weeks ago, I worried about the adjustment period. His old school was a traditional daycare, where most of the kids were in class together until the bitter end. His new school is more of a school with after-care (or "late stay" as he calls it), and only one other kid in his class stays late. I worried that Eli would feel sad at 3:45 when all the other kids were picked up by their parents to go home and he had to go across the hall to the "late-stay room."

Then I swiftly came up with a parenting move I'm still patting myself on the back for. I told him this: "At the end of the day, all the other kids are going to have to go home. But you get to stay and play more."

His eyes lit up. He actually clapped his hands with excitement. "I get to stay and play more!" he laughed. It made him feel special. It made him feel proud.

The truth is, as working parents we can come up with all kinds of reasons to feel guilty about the effect it has on our kids. But I have always made every conscious effort not to frame it as a negative, not to say "I have to go to work," not to apologize for somehow abandoning him. Going to work, going to school, even going to the late-stay room are just things we do in our family, because they are important. We are important.

Of course, this is easy for me to say now when I've had a good week, when I'm lucky enough to have a job with good benefits, when our family situation allows me to work outside my home. But it's something that's important for me to remember. I have a regular, full-time, outside-of-the-house job, and I refuse to feel guilty about it anymore.