brag on your kid

i passed up a carnival last week for moms to brag with wild abandon on their offspring. this method versus the art of subtle implication most of us tend to use. the purpose of this carnival was to focus on the good if you've felt swept up by the less than pleasant bits of parenting. even so, i find plenty of parents are skilled at back-handed bragging on themselves and their children during tales of ornery, stubborn and boundary-testing.

on that day my daughter opened the child-proof cap of our flintstone vitamins and, knowing she was about to be stormed, grabbed as many freds and wilmas and barneys as she could in her little fist. and then realized her fisted score was trapped, fist and all, inside the bottle. it took some cajoling and quite a few tears to get maddy's hand out of the bottle. playing out another of aesop's fables which was what made the whole thing so amusing to me.

i laughed to myself what part of that a person would brag up for the carnival. in the hands of the right parent...

we have friends whose roughly 2.5 yr old once spent a few minutes eyeing the cookie jar on top of the counter before getting a piece of paper and sliding it under the jar until the paper became wedged firmly underneath. then. he pulled.

now that's something to brag on. same as the sweet little girl the today show featured once who was reading at 18 months.

there isn't really much our kids do that other kids their age are not. or simply haven't had the opportunity to try. or been caught doing. we just do not come up with the fun nicknames like "teeny houdini". the art is more in the parent than the child. turning whatever that child did into something so uber-spectacular. doesn't mean i'm not proud that caleb recently read 'go, dog, go' all by himself. he knows that, and that's all that matters. (versus the self-served blogging to strangers about it.) but. he also knows about that little 18 month old baby who could read circles around his 4 year old self.

it's the second shoe: 'God made you. He gave you special gifts and talents, and loves you SO much. and oh. by the way. He made everybody, and gave everybody special talents and gifts, and loves everybody SO much...'

i get a kick out of little kid stories. every child is gifted, you just have to pay attention. it's usually the brag, implied or hanging-all-out, by the parent who does that annoys me. unless the story has a large dollap of tongue-in-cheek or acknowledges that second shoe, i instantly bristle assuming the parent thinks their child is the only one who did/said/thought/strutted. i bristle so much so anymore that it alters the whole sweet story sour.

that's pretty lousy of me. and it assumes i'm always so deft at telling stories of my children without coming off like i hold a lime-light above their heads myself. i know i do not. sometimes i'm in a hurry and lucky just to get the story of how maddy scaled the oven door and climbed on top of the stove emailed before she goes at it again. let alone touch on how i know she's not the only one who can climb...

so. i set out to read all those blog posts with a smile on my face. practice makes perfect. i'd like to work on this flaw before it cripples me entirely, and - forget the random stranger's blog - my friends start to wonder what's wrong with my face whenever they start in on a tale about their smartest kid ever. or worse still, their smartest kid ever starts to wonder.

i'd like to eventually brag on myself for not being this person anymore who rolls her eyes at a blog carnival titled "brag on your kid". that would be something special.