If there’s guilt to be had, I seem to want more than my fair share of it. I feel guilty about a lot of things. I feel guilty when my kids are late to school. I feel guilty when I don’t volunteer to bring homemade lasagna to school on Teacher Appreciation Day. I feel guilty when my kids eat cold cereal for breakfast-again. But few things make me feel guiltier than taking them to the dentist and finding out that they have cavities. Oh, man, I have shed some tears over cavities.
When Kennedy was about four, I took her to the dentist and she had several cavities. When the dentist said he would need to put in silver caps, I just about lost it. I shrunk down into my seat when he interrogated me (in fairness, he was a perfectly nice man, but I felt interrogated nonetheless):
“Does she eat hard candy? Does she brush her teeth alone, or do you do it for her?” (He added that he had brushed all his kids’ teeth for them until they were at least 10, which I thought was very strange indeed.) “Does she drink soda?” And then he looked askance at my newly-weaned one-year-old who was happily chugging milk out of a sippy cup and said: “And those sippy cups are just about the worst thing ever invented.” (Ever invented? Wow. And I had been feeling happy that she was finally weaned and actually proud that she was drinking from a sippy cup!)
I made an appointment to have the cavities filled with the dreaded silver caps and scrambled out to the car and buckled everyone in. I started bawling as soon as I dialed Brent’s number to tell him the grievous news. He felt bad for her-it’s no fun to have fillings-but he was genuinely puzzled by my reaction. He assured me that it wasn’t our fault and kept telling me that she would survive. She did survive and now has perfectly straight teeth (without braces) and hasn’t had any cavities since.
Marin (#2) hasn’t had any cavities. Stuart (#3) had a pile of fillings done (and the dreaded silver caps) when he was 3 or 4 and none since then. We eat pretty much the same stuff. The kids brush their teeth every night. I’m guessing they don’t brush in the morning because I don’t check. And they pretty much never floss. Thus, the rational part of my brain tells me that cavities are not my fault-just like it’s not an accomplishment to be proud of when I take them to the dentist and they have no cavities. It just is.
It’s interesting to note how readily I accept blame for bad things my kids do but am loath to take credit for good things. It makes more sense to take credit and accept responsibility for everything they do, doesn’t it? At least that’s consistent. So if I pat myself on the back because Stuart has only ever gotten one red mark on his conduct sheet in nearly three years of schooling, I should also accept responsibility when he kicks one of his sisters for teasing him.
Or can we pick and choose? Because if we’re allowed to pick, I think I’ll take the credit for all my kids’ good conduct sheets and pass the buck on the silver caps. Those just can’t be my fault.
I’m sure some picking and choosing must be necessary, because honestly, sometimes you can tell that something did come from you (whether it’s good or bad)–maybe you made a special point of teaching them a certain thing, maybe you know that you’re the only one they could have picked it up from. It can’t be an all-or-nothing situation. Whether you absorb the good and bad together or try not to absorb anything at all, though, is a different question, and I think that might need to be a conscious decision based on how you deal with it.
I think we should all change our vocabulary and reserve guilt for sin alone. Real guilt goes with those real big sins somewhere out there. As fellow mothers, lets unanimously exchange that word for some other word like humm….responsible. The weight and ownership of the emotion shifts faster with this word. Though I may feel responsible for my son’s terrible temper–it is all his. You may feel responsible for your daughter’s cavities, but really they are hers–she earned them. You taught her how to brush. And you even took her to a dentist. You are a responsible parent! While I try to change my vocabulary and save guilt for sin, I still fall into that guilt-like feeling. Is this one of those Eve curses? We believe that men will be punished for their own sins except for Eve’s transgressions?
Hinged, I got chills reading that last line, so true and so sad. I love your ideas about reframing the issue through the language we use (a reminder of how powerful language can be).
When I was a young mother, a very dear friend said something to me that meant a great deal to me at the time and has really stayed with me.We had taken our babies to Target to shop together and my son was being a nightmare. He tried to poke her baby daughter in the eyes, he was running away from me, touching everything, hiding underneath clothing racks. I was overwhelmed, deskilled and so embarrassed. I kept apologizing to my friend for his terrible behavior and she stopped me and said, “You didn’t poke my baby’s eyes or try to pull that display rack down, you don’t need to apologize to me.” Such a kindness and it was the first time I even had a glimmer of not identifying myself so strongly with my son’s very human and relatively normal 2-year-old behavior.That doesn’t mean we don’t try to be responsible, to address the behavior and try to help our kids not be jerks, but that little space she created for me was huge for my emotional life as a mother. It made me relax and feel encouraged rather than discouraged.
Oh no! I’m supposed to feel guilty for feeding my kids cold cereal every morning?! :)
My kids are sooooo similar – sans the cavities …. Okay, my 10 year old has had one cavity. But this past year, my sons dental hygiene had to be defended as part of a year long custody battle. Dental records were actually subpoenaed to prove my “unfitness” as a mother. Wow. (the end of the story is that no, I am not an unfit mother because my 10 year old has suspect hygiene habits … But I will say the battle had lots of assumptions and allegations based on a firm beleif of what Mormonism teaches mothers “should be”)
“Wow” is right, Lyn. Yikes. I have thought more than once that I’d hate to see what an angry ex-husband and an attorney could do to me in a divorce. Hope to never face that.