Being a parent is like playing an old-school arcade game. When you’re winning and notching up the points, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. But when the run of play turns against you, and you slip and slide down a level, it can wear out as you reach the bottom and start all over again. And then, again, you win! It just takes time, and a whole lot of patience.
He shot across the shop floor on squishy hands and knees, mom rushing to scoop him up, dad looking on indulgently. I watched them for longer than was necessary. I’m in a challenging parenting phase at the moment, and I find it soothing to watch new parents with their babies.
Not only do I find it fascinating that they somehow manage to combine competence and panic, fulfilment and exhaustion all in one expression, but watching them reminds me that what we’re going through right now is just a phase. This challenge will pass. We’ll soon move on to the next level.
It’s an intense phase when they’re new and needy. More intense than when they can feed themselves or handle the butter knife without amputating a limb, but each phase comes with its own challenges. At times, when you’ve reached a particular phase, it might cross your mind that you have this parenting thing waxed.
Wishful thinking.
Parenting can be very similar to gaming. Ever played Donkey Kong when you were younger? Remember the challenge, “How high can you get?”? Leaping barrels and running from platform to platform, you were often led to believe that you were finally going to ace it, only to have a barrel fall on your head, forcing you back to the beginning.
A barrel hit us when Kid2 came along. Kid1 slept through the night from the age of six weeks. His dad and I would be quietly smug as we put our baby into his crib each night, knowing he’d only wake again at six the following morning. We badly wanted to be loudly smug, but we suspected our sleep-deprived peers would be reluctant to celebrate our insanely good fortune with us.
Our barrel, Kid2, came into this world a screamy non-sleeper. She hated the crib, railed against the dark, and seemed determined to indefinitely deny us our sleep. None of our previously acquired experience or abilities helped.
Back to the bottom of the parenting screen we went.
One of my kids suffers from anticipation anxiety. Despite being an A-student, they worry about failing at school; they worry about getting things wrong, like wearing civvies on the wrong day; they worry when I’ve signed a school notice in the wrong colour pen (I’m only half joking). I’m using all my skills to try to get them to relax.
It reminds me of those room escape games. You know the type: You’re placed in a room and you have to solve a mystery to escape. These games require logic and memory, two very useful skills in the long game of parenting. You’re given clues to click on and objects to collect that will help you. You just have to find them.
In some of the more obscure room escape games, though, you’re at a loss for what to click on and how to find the clues. You can find yourself opening and closing the same door repeatedly, just in case you’ve missed something.
We’ve spoken at length to our stress-ball kid, we’ve tried preparing them for stressful situations, and we’ve practised relaxation techniques. We’ve clicked on all the clues and opened the same door repeatedly, to no apparent benefit. We’ve noticed that as this kid gets older, though, they’re loosening up a bit. It’s becoming apparent that this is a phase. We’ll complete this level eventually. We’ll open the door and escape.
“Levelling up” is a gaming term that means you’ve acquired enough experience, abilities, or points in the game to progress to a new level. I felt like this happened a few years ago, when Kids1 and 2 hit adolescence.
We could at last forgo the animated all-ages movies for something more suited to everyone’s taste. We could go out to eat and ignore the kiddies’ menu. We could have real conversations that didn’t involve fart or knock-knock jokes. Our family levelled up.
And then we hit a challenge. This phase we’re going through is taxing. It’s requiring all my skills and abilities, and some I don’t even have yet. Sometimes, I find myself wishing that parenting was indeed a game, so I could Google the cheat for this phase, or maybe use a temporary power-up that would afford me some extraordinary abilities to solve it.
But ultimately, I know that this is a phase. A level that we’ll conquer, not to gain some virtual trophy, or to reach the end of the game, but to move on to the next phase, and the next after that…
I’m up for the challenge.
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