1,000 ways how NOT to raise a child

There is a famous quote attributed to Thoams Edison. When asked about the thousands of times it took him to finally get the incadescent lightbulb to work correctly, he said something to the affect of, "I did not fail 1,000 times. I merely found out how not to create it correctly."

It is supposed to inspire the rest of us to not give up, to have a positive attitude in the face of defeat, to look at a closed door as an opportunity to go through the window. Or something like that.

But as a parent, I don't have 1,000 times to fail. If I mess up just once, Reese may end up a irreversibly damaged. That's a lot of pressure.

Today I let Reese play with crayons, markers and coloring books. No surprise, there was more coloring of her hands, face and clothes than there was coloring of the coloring book. And I sat and watched the whole thing. I did not step in to stop her from coloring her hands. I tried to limit the coloring of her clothes and steadfastly stopped any coloring of furniture/walls. But her hands? Go crazy! Even as it was happening I was thinking I probably should put a hault to the coloring of the hands. But then I thought, "She's a kid. Kids are supposed to get dirty." Plus, she was concentrating so hard while she held the marker in her right hand and colored her left plam. I thought her curiousity and discovery was worth the bath later on.

And as I made her lunch, I needed her to chill out and get out from under my feet. The solution? A nice combination of grapes still on the bunch and Sesame Street on TV. She's never pulled grapes off of the branch before and I can almost garuntee she put some in her mouth. And it's never a good idea to use television as a babysitter. But grape vines don't taste good, so she's not going to eat a lot of that, and Sesame Street is Sesame Street.


Will today's adventures result in Reese growing up as the girl in the her grade constantly covered in finger paint and the one who eats weird things (like grape vines) and addicted to TV?

I sure hope not. And, unlike Edison, I don't have a thousand tries to mess up and figure it out.