The Inevitables: Children's Milestones that the Parenting Books Forgot

Parenting books are all about chronicling children's milestones. The experts advise on what they are and when to expect them. The doctors break them up into neat and tidy categories: the emotional, the physical and the social. Your child's development outlined in a rather straightforward fashion.

But there are other less celebrated milestones that parents are left to discover on their own. It’s uncanny how universal they are.

To our delight or dismay, every parent on the planet will deal with every child in the world doing one or more of the following with pure and utter abandon. I call them, "The Inevitables of Parenthood":

1) Riding their cat or dog like a horse.

2) Throwing away a cellphone, important piece of mail or remote control.

3) Screaming &@#! in public.

4) Using their head like a wrecking ball.

5) Deciding night is day {never the reverse}.

6) Eating dirt, paper, paint and/or glue.

7) Throwing or otherwise engaging with their own poop.

8) Glomming onto some television show, character and/or song that you find abhorrent.

9) Ensconcing themselves in toilet paper.

10) Kicking their father in the balls.

11) Dining on pet food.

12) Sticking a small object so far into an orifice as to render it unretrievable without professional know-how.

13) Doing any or all of these things repeatedly, despite your best efforts to cajole, plead, order, admonish and/or otherwise deter them.

If you’re a parent and these things haven’t happened to you yet, be warned, they are inevitable. Your

response is inevitable too. It will likely be similar to other parents who have gone before you. Of course, the amplitude of your child's behavior and your own mood will determine the quality of your response too. But, on a good day (or if you're in pubic), you will laugh. On a bad day, you will scream, curse or cry to the heavens above. Either way, your encounter with one of life's inevitables will pass and you will carry on.

If, on that day, you happen to find yourself in a particularly philosophical mood, you just might be able to rationalize that you are getting in some good training for the inevitables of the teenage years...

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Doctor's Orders: Take a Chill Pill

George was positive Claire was cross-eyed for a while. A trip to a specialist assured us she was the picture of health. Surely, our pediatrician referred us to the eye doctor more to allay parental fears than out of concern for Claire’s sight. Dr. Gillespie’s been in medicine long enough to know that a parent’s anxiety is best assuaged by keeping him or her busy.

At each well visit to the doctor’s office, we hear a non-stop string of: “She looks fine”, “I don’t see a problem there”, “Why don’t we check to be on the safe side”. Our doc remains upbeat, despite our endless paranoia about our daughter’s health.

I imagine that someday Dr. Gillespie will reach a breaking point and respond, “What are you crazy?” instead. That’s because, even as I’m relaying my question, I know I sound like a crazy person. I just can’t seem to help myself.

George and I can divide the quality of our obsessions into two distinct categories. George is preoccupied with Claire’s physical health. Why is the skin on her feet peeling? (Try a little olive oil). What are the bumps on the back of her neck? (It’s prickly heat). Are you sure she isn’t wheezing? (Her breathing sounds fine).

I have a desperate need for Claire to meet all of the appropriate milestones exactly, to the minute, on time. When Claire’s weight dips from the 85 percentile to the 50^th, I’m certain I’m starving her and bombard the good doctor with questions about diet and nutrition. She does her best to pull me down from the ledge.

The problem is I’m never completely satisfied with the answers or that everything’s really ok.

I don’t think we are the only parents who can’t stand the idea that our child might have vulnerabilities. Nor are we alone in our fear that our child’s vulnerabilities might just be out of our control. Worrying and the subsequent overcompensation brought on by said worrying are conditions of the human race. These states become compounded when you become a parent.

If I were to ask Dr. Gillespie about my own heart palpitations, I’m sure she would tell me that everything’s just fine…

Pink Eye and Breast Milk: Panacea

George had some of my breast milk. He put it in his eye. Yes, you read that correctly. He was suffering from pink eye, so I googled “Homeopathic remedies and Conjunctivitis”. Breast milk was listed as a remedy, next to honey, salt and belladonna. We didn’t have any belladonna on hand; however, we were not lacking for breast milk.

So I did some more research, which gave new meaning to the word “nursing”. Evidently, moms have been treating pink eye with breast milk for centuries. Today, even doctors are recommending it. What’s more, breast milk is touted as a cure-all for all kinds of ailments, from ear infections to eczema to minor scraps and scratches. And get this; according to some provocative research out of Scandinavia, it may even cure cancer! These miraculous healing properties are due to the antibodies in breast milk that have been shown to kill bacteria and viruses.

Unfortunately, our own homespun experiment into the curative powers of my particular variety of breast milk didn’t last very long. George quickly abandoned this tactic for a trip to the dark side of Western medicine. Oh, well. I was a bit disappointed. I wasn’t surprised, though. Putting Drano in his eye would have been less complicated than his wife’s breast milk. I also realized that I’ve come as close as I ever will to having a super power! And that if breast milk can do all of those things, imagine what it’s doing for Claire? I may not be restoring George to health or saving Gotham City, but I’m content to stick with growing a healthy baby girl.