We Are All The Helicopter-Tiger-Hipster-Crunchy-Granola-Soccer Mom

hipster momMy 2-year-old walks around barefoot. It’s not my choice, obviously, but the kid refuses to wear socks. And, in the warmer months, his shoes are usually flung somewhere on a patch of grass while he runs free in the yard, a park, the sidewalk.

“I’m calling Children’s Aid on you,” my new neighbor joked last summer when she spotted him crossing the street barefoot (I, of course, was running after him with his shoes).

Here’s the thing: it’s pretty gross to be barefoot on the sidewalk and clearly I don’t want him stepping on glass but in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t care. What can I say? He’s a free spirit. And if he refuses to wear shoes, big whoop. (Ditto eating sand from the sandbox, another pastime.)

So here I am, totally crunchy-granola mom when it comes to bare feet in the playground, and yet I couldn’t be more of a helicopter mom when it comes to ensuring he doesn’t kill himself on the swings. I know that I should let him swing as high as he likes and if he falls, well, he’ll learn. But I can’t. I’m too busy being mama bear about the whole thing, and I annoy even myself.

The irony of me hovering over my barefoot, sand-eating kid is not lost on me. It’s quite a juxtaposition, but that pretty much sums up my parenting style. (I’m a Gemini, after all.) And I believe this overly-neurotic-meets-laid-back style of parenting is way more common than we think. For that reason alone, I think it’s time we eliminated parenting “labels” altogether.

Take, for instance, hipster moms. I’d like to say that these are the urban types who sip fair-trade coffee during brunch at a groovy little cafe that only they know about. They’ll read the paper with their musician-husbands as the kids, clad in Bob Marley onesies, play with wooden blocks. But this would be a sweeping generalization, one I’m trying to eschew. Especially because one such mom I know just hired a tutor for her 4-year-old.

“He’s falling behind in reading comprehension,” she told me, deadpan. The kid is 4! But the Tiger mom in her just can’t let it go.

I get such a kick out of this, and it me makes me realize that we’re all split-personality when it comes to our children. One friend of mine doesn’t really care what her son eats so long as there are fruits and veggies in the mix. This is the same woman who, upon seeing her 3-year-old’s class picture, rushed him to the pediatrician’s office because the dark circles under his eyes convinced her he was malnourished. Another mom wasn’t into breastfeeding she didn’t even try it because she finds the whole thing kind of nasty and yet she wouldn’t dare put anything non-organic into her toddler’s mouth. [tagbox tag=”parenting style”]

This all reminds me of how we act in general kids or no kids. For example, most women I know at least within my core group, anyway will eat clean all day and work out hard, only to end the night with a bottle of wine and bag of chips. Even as a rebellious teenager, I sneaked away to an out-of-town Grateful Dead concert without telling a soul, except I took the bus instead of a car because I figured I didn’t have a lot of experience  driving on the highway. (“Organized rebellion” is what I like to call it.)

And so the same is true for Mommyland. Most of us read the studies about screen time how too much TV is bad for little brains and we limit it to 30 minutes a day. We’re strict about it, and there are no exceptions. We’ll then let our kids play two hours of Wii because, well, mommy needs a break. And at the end of the day, it won’t kill them.

I was talking about this with a friend last night, and she said our need to label mothers reminds her of the closing scene of The Breakfast Club. If you’re a child of the 80s, you’ll know what I mean. “Dear Mr. Vernon,” the high school students write in a letter to their principal:

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest of terms, in the most convenient definitions.

But what we found is that each one of us is a brain…and an athlete…and a basket case…a princess…and a criminal…

Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club

Okay, so I’m a dork for quoting The Breakfast Club, but what made me connect to this movie in the 80s is exactly how I feel about the mash-up of moms I see today. Each one of us is a tiger, a helicopter, a hipster. And if you think otherwise, well, you may just be stuck in high school. And you suck.

(Photo: Siri Stafford)

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