My Mom Told Me I Didn’t Have To

“She won’t stop crying, I’m afraid she’s going to make herself sick.”

It was the last swim class of the session and once again my one year old had been kicked out of child watch. She’s a determined child, and she doesn’t much like to be with anyone but her mom.

But have you ever sat through a swim class holding a one-year-old who wants NOTHING but to be in the pool with her brothers? For starters, it’s hot at the pool if you’re not in a bathing suit. So you walk the length of the pool, bouncing the baby, pointing out the window, singing songs, sweating profusely, and avoiding the stares of the other parents as your daughter screeches and furiously tries to wiggle her way out of your arms like an angry tuna.

Thank goodness for grandparents, as there was not a chance I was going home alone with the three of them after that ordeal.  ‘It’s the worst 45 minutes of my week!” I exclaimed to my parents as I decompressed over a glass of wine after class. “And when we get out of the pool? The boys are cold, whiny, and wild.  The baby crawls into strangers dressing rooms while I try to make sure the boys don’t run around naked, and nobody listens to a word I say!” I began to strategize how to make the next session less miserable. “Maybe a later time slot so my husband can meet us there?” “Or separate classes… but then I have to go through it twice…”.

My mother cocked her eyebrows at me as though the answer was obvious. “Don’t do swim lessons.”

“I have to do swim lessons. Swim lessons are a thing you have to do.” I probably glared at her. Which wasn’t fair, since she was providing the wine. In my defense, it had been a long afternoon.

“The kids will learn to swim when they’re ready to learn to swim. Go to family swim with them, take them to the beach, they’ll learn to swim.”

This was not the first time my mother had given me somewhat unorthodox parenting advice.

There was the time we were discussing my soon to be three year old who was still in diapers. I worried that starting potty training right before we had a third baby was going to be terrible and was agonizing about the ideal timeline.

“Don’t do it”. She said.

“Don’t potty train? I’m pretty sure I have to potty train.”

“Nope,” she said. “He’ll do it himself when he’s ready.”

It seemed a bit preposterous, but I was really pregnant and my patience was already in short supply. I didn’t want to spend the last few weeks before new-baby chaos cleaning urine-soaked clothes and trying to not snap at my soon to be middle child. So against my better judgment, I listened to her.

I can’t remember exactly when he decided to start using the toilet but it wasn’t terribly long after that (though admittedly solidly after he turned three). He’s about to be four and he’s been completely potty trained for a while. And all those urine soaked clothes I worried about cleaning up? Didn’t happen. Letting him wait until his body was ready, for this particular child, resulted in a very easy, almost completely accident-free process.

My mom is also to blame for the fact that when my daughter was six months old I disassembled her crib. She’d co-slept with me since birth, and I always nursed her to sleep but I was at a point where I needed to be able to put her down in the evenings and carve out a little slice of time for myself. I wasn’t ready to stop either co-sleeping or nursing to sleep, but I had serious doubts that I’d be able to transfer her from the boob to the crib. With two other children who are quite needy at bedtime, I was in need of the easiest possible solution. 

As I played out a hundred different possibilities in my head, I remembered my mother telling me, back when my oldest was a baby, to just ditch the crib and put a mattress on the floor. 

I was aghast. This woman was clearly absurd. “Everybody puts their baby in a crib! People have cribs!”

“You don’t have to.” 

It took me five years and three kids to listen to her on that one, but one day my husband came home to find I’d taken the crib apart, moved it to the basement, and put the mattress on the floor. Now at seven pm I lie down with the baby on the mattress, nurse her until she falls asleep, and roll away. And most nights, until 10-11, I have a blissfully kid-free stretch of time. For my family, right now, it works. 

As for the swim lessons? I skipped the next session. We’re making a concerted effort to go to family swim more often, and I’m bribing them encouraging them to practice what they learned in lessons. And if anyone gives me a hard time for turning my nose up at this parenting rite of passage I’ll just tell them the truth:

“My mom said I didn’t have to.”