Faking It

“Your parents faked their way through it. You fake your way through it.  And you just hope they don’t turn out to be serial killers.”

The source of this proverb?  Modern Family on ABC.  I may lose credibility with many of you by admitting that I love this show and that nearly ever week it makes me cry.  But I can’t get enough of people (or TV characters) admitting that parenting is always humbling and occasionally humiliating.

Today, after playing a game with base 10 blocks, I am fairly confident that the boys know all of the combinations of two numbers that add up to 10.  We’ve been playing with these blocks for three months, they hadn’t been making any progress, and I was starting to think I made a mistake by not buying one of the expensive, well-regarded math curriculum.  But today it all kind of clicked, and I was feeling mighty proud of myself.  Of course my brilliant method may have had nothing to do with it. They may have learned it faster or better with another method.  But when I go in to teach them, I fake it.  I act like I know all about how to teach kids how to add.  I need to do that so that they will relax enough to let me teach them.  I need to do that so that I will have the confidence to stick with it when I panic that my kids are falling way behind the other kids.

It has been ten days since Ezra has left any scars on Zach’s face or neck.  Jeff and I tried multiple strategies to get Ez to stop scratching Zach.  All of our strategies involved some natural consequence of hurting someone else, the faking-it discipline technique du jour in our house. None of them worked.  Then, out of desperation, we took away his “sweetie” blanket one night.  Ta-da! No more scratching.

I like to think that we know so much more than our parents did about good parenting.  If reading books, talking to your friends, and attending seminars leads to better parenting then we must.  But the truth is I think that faking it, mixed with a lot of love, is working as well for us as it did for them.

Do you fake it too?  Please share…