I recently discovered something horrifying. My parents didn’t listen to a single parenting podcast as they raised me! And as far as I can tell, based on that information, they just kinda winged it!
It does make my childhood make more sense, though. On my first-grade birthday, my mom passed out hand-crafted heart-shaped invitations to my classmates and invited them over for homemade cake. No theme, no color-coordinated gift bags, no trampolines. Not even a donkey to pet. Never has a lack of podcast consulting been more apparent. I got stuck with a quaint day of quality time with loving friends and family. Boring!
Speaking of boring, how about my name? Jerry? What a bland snoozefest. Did they panic at the last minute and see an ice cream label? For God’s sake, listen to one baby-naming podcast in nine months. I can think of five cooler names just off the top of my head: Asher, Brycen, Grayson, Daxton, Paxton. Or even Braxton! How cool could I have been if it just had an X in my name?
And how about the food? They fed me nothing but purees as if they skipped every single baby-led weaning episode in their feed. On top of that, they act horrified when I hand my baby an entire avocado. It is a fact that if you don’t watch your kid choke a few hundred times before they turn two, they will live in fear of carrots their whole lives.
I bet they gave me formula too. Where were the busybody moms around that could have shamed my mom into breastfeeding? Another neighborhood mom couldn’t have managed one shitty comment in the grocery store as she handed me a bottle of formula? Maybe I was just one piece of snarky unsolicited advice away from being a super genius.
They’re just blessed I turned out as great as I did. Through some stroke of luck, I managed to survive every misstep and live long enough to think of the theme “One-derland” for my own kid’s first party.