Ordinary Days By Lauren Denton: Giving candy to babies and other parenting advice

During a recent car ride with my youngest daughter, Sela, she turned to me and said she had a question. Historically, that pronouncement coming from Sela has ranged from how babies get into mommies’ tummies to how “they” make towels, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. 

Usually I know the answer or can come up with a close approximation of it, but this time, I struggled. All she asked was how you teach a child yes and no, but I didn’t know how to answer her. 

How did we teach our girls what “yes” and “no” means? Surely we did, but I had no recollection of teaching them the actual words. 

So I told her how over the years, we’ve taught our dog, Ruby, the things she can’t do — moving her off the couch and saying “no” teaches her she can’t get on the couch. Similarly, moving the girls away from the hot stove and saying “no” taught them not to touch the stove. 

“But how do you teach kids what ‘yes’ means?” she asked. The only thing I could think of in the moment was, “I guess it just comes naturally — when they ask for something, you say ‘yes’ and give it to them. And they just … figure it out.” Her face was pensive and concerned as she thought about my (admittedly underwhelming) answers. I asked her if she worried about being a good parent, and she said with a sigh, “Yes, all the time.”

It’s not the first time she’s hinted at this concern over being a good parent. When the girls were very young, I started notebooks for each of them, writing down funny things they said or did. Sela’s notebook is full of words she mispronounced when she was a toddler (“pee-wink” for penguin, “fung” for thumb), but after those faded, she started asking real questions. 

When she was seven, I wrote down that she asked me if, when I was her age, I worried that I wouldn’t be a very good mom. I told her I didn’t remember if I’d worried about that and I asked her if she worried about it. She said, “Yes, I worry I won’t learn how to do all the things. Like maybe I’ll give them too much candy. How do you know how much candy to give?”

Another time — it must have been a good parenting day for me — she told me, “Meme and Popsie [my parents] must have taken a magic pill when you were a kid because they made you into the best mom!” 

That one made me laugh because I knew without a doubt if I told my parents what she said, they’d laugh even harder about the idea of a magic parenting pill, and especially over the idea of them doing anything to “make” me into a good parent. Just like I’m not doing anything to “make” my girls into good parents. If anything, I hope they forget the bad days and only remember the good days when they look back on their childhoods. 

I told my dad the other day about that magic pill conversation with Sela, and indeed, he laughed. “I assure you,” he said, “I had no magic pill and I don’t think your mother did either. All we did was wing it.” 

I did tell Sela most parents just figure things out as they go along, but I didn’t admit the extent to which that is true. It might scare a kid a little to know just how inexperienced her parents were when she came along, and how the only way we parents really learn anything is by doing it wrong and then trying it another way. It’s sort of like all the rest of life, isn’t it? We can read all the books and take all the courses, watch how other people do it and listen to what the “experts” say, but when it comes down to it, we just try something and see if it works. If it backfires, we try another tactic the next time. 

I don’t think we ever gave Sela or Kate the definitions of yes and no, but somehow we got it across to them that they couldn’t touch the hot stove, cross the street without looking both ways or go anywhere with a stranger, even if the stranger had a cute puppy. Somehow we taught them that sleeping all night long was a very good thing, that too much candy causes a stomach ache and brushing teeth is better than getting a cavity filled. 

It wasn’t without trial and error, though. Their dad and I didn’t take a magic pill, and we had no expert knowledge, either. I guess we really did just wing it. 

Hopefully one day, we’ll get to watch our girls wing it with their own children. And I’ll have to bite my tongue to keep from giving too much advice, because I know by now there’s no magic parenting pill, and the only way they’ll learn is the same way we did — by trying, failing and trying again.

When I’m not writing about my family and our various shenanigans, I write novels and go to the grocery store. You can find my books in stores, online, and locally at Little Professor Bookshop. You can reach me by email at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks or Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.