Assume Makes an Ass

On assumptions I have made and continue to make in parenting, and how I forgive myself for them

Hey, friends! Your resident Middle-Aged Lady Mom here! Reminder if you’re new here: This week is a special occasion— I don’t be hitting your inboxes daily forever. Next week it’s back to 1x week. Or maybe you won’t hear from me at all? Who can tell?

It’s Day 4 of National Parenting Week and I’m giving you an international delight! Today’s guest writer,

Kylie-Ann

who writes Distracted.

I can’t help but think how different those early months of motherhood would have been if I had read even one paragraph Kylie-Ann had written. I would have felt forgiven. What a gift that would have been to know I wasn’t the only one not enjoying every minute.

Kylie-Ann is honest, kind, funny, charming, raw, real, and relatable. I remember reading one of her posts called, My Children Bore Me and I was like Whoa! Are we allowed to say that???? YES. Yes, we are! Kylie-Ann has freed us! She says the things we are all thinking and reading her words always feels like a warm hug or a soft blanket or that feeling you get between glass #2 and glass #3 of Prosecco right before the headache sets in. She is also a wonderful, dedicated mom which comes through in every post. Oh, and she’s also a talented artist! You’ll see her beautiful illustrations sprinkled throughout her essays.

Kylie-Ann comes to us from across the pond and as an added bonus, she uses words like “whilst” and “mum” and “pram” which will add some much needed class to this busted up joint.

I encourage you all to dig into Distracted and if you have a new mom in your life, share these beautiful essays. It will serve her better than anything on her registry!

Kylie-Ann, it is an honor to debut this original essay here on Middle-Aged Lady Mom!

XO,

Shelly

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I was waiting outside the school gates in a queue for my beloved eldest son to finish school one morning, moaning with two other Mums. It was the first week of his year group starting school so they were easing the children in with a few hours for the first few days and then two more days where they were to stay for lunch. This was the Wednesday - the third day of picking my son up three hours after he had gone in to school and I was sick of it.

I hadn’t realised how disruptive the short days would be. I hated waiting around to pick him up. I hated standing in the queue for twenty minutes each day. I was expecting freedom when he finally went to school, yet in this situation I was anything but free.

I was talking to the other Mums about how slow the walk home was. The children were starving hungry when we picked them up as they hadn’t had anything but fruit since breakfast and when they would normally be eating their lunch we were dragging them home. The walk for us, which would normally be 8 minutes was taking nearer half an hour. He would walk at a snail’s pace, dragging behind me as I pushed my youngest in the stroller - a stroller I wished I could just throw him in and power walk home. I could not take it any more.

Anyway the lady who I had only just met looked at me very calm and collected and said, well have you tried a buggy board?*

*For those unacquainted - this is a piece of equipment that attaches to the buggy, stroller, pram, which the older child can stand on when they refuse to walk any further.

I scoffed. I can’t fit one on here. Don’t be ridiculous! (Of course I would have one if I could, I thought) - I had to force myself not to roll my eyes.

Anyway I saw this same lady a few weeks later as I was picking my son up from after-school club. She looked over as I turned the stroller around to leave - my son smiling as he stood on a buggy board - a buggy board that has no problem fitting on the back of my stroller - none at all.

Despite my restrained eye-roll at the time, I had thought after - well, does it fit? I had assumed that it wouldn’t fit because I had never seen someone with an umbrella fold stroller like mine with a buggy board. I assumed the umbrella fold prevented it from being able to be attached so I never even looked in to it. It doesn’t.

What an idiot. What an Ass, as they say.

“When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me”
Oscar Wilde. 

Not my son googling “buggy board”.

All the hours I had wasted with long journeys walking longer than the four year old wanted to walk… all of the meltdowns because he was tired; they all could have been prevented by this simple and reasonably-priced contraption. Am I that lazy that I wouldn’t have looked it up?

I realised, then, that I had made many assumptions in parenthood. Some bigger than others.

It was assumptions about the ease of parenting that led me to contribute confidently to the decision to move away friends and family to a part of London where we didn’t know anyone. The assumption that we wouldn’t need anyone else, that we could do it alone. It was these assumptions that led us to decide to have children in the first place!

It too was an assumption that our second child would be as easy-going as our first that led us to decide to have two children within a relatively short space of time. Along with the assumption that the second pregnancy would be a similar experience to the first and wouldn't be too much for me having a toddler in tow.

I assumed these things, but I don’t think it makes me an Ass.

In this sense I wonder if assumptions are my way of finding my way in the world, using past experiences to try to map out the route ahead, rather than mere acts of laziness.

In the case of the buggy board, I was likely me trying to save myself the disappointment, having been in many situations like it before. I had gotten used to the fact that my life was hard, I hadn’t thought to find ways to make it easier; I thought this was how it was meant to be.

Assuming is the quick route but of course it isn’t always right. Perhaps it is inevitable it would be the route this time-poor and exhausted parent would take but I berate myself about it. After all if I hadn’t had made those other assumptions, I might not have had my second son. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

I probably should have been embarrassed when I saw that lady again, but I wasn’t. I held my head high and smiled - I laughed a little inside, actually, because I thought I’m going to be home in 10 minutes if he stays on this board. I’m taking that as a parenting win even if I could have saved myself a lot of hassle if I had bothered to get one long ago - and a win is a win.