How to Raise a Perfect Child

The wind is blasting tonight, at least forty miles an hour, based on the howls outside. Our son has woken up three times in the last hour, crying, incredibly distressed. Is it because of the wind? Is it because we had a babysitter from three to seven this afternoon/evening, and it threw him for a loop? Is it because his nose was stuffed? Or is he teething?

I don't know. It could be all those things. At any rate, it was agonizing to listen to that, even for a few minutes. And instead of letting him cry, as we sometimes do if he wakes up briefly in the night and cries less, we went to him--first me, then my husband, with a nasal aspirator. Having his nose cleared seemed to calm him.

I missed the end of the Oscars, including Sandra Bullock's acceptance speech for Best Actress. I caught it later on YouTube: after the jokes and the usual expressions of gratitude to the filmmakers, she thanked her mother for making her work hard every day. A simple sentiment; yet she spoke with a voice choked with emotion, and it nearly made me cry to see it.

I don't know how to raise a perfect child, but I know that it's important to encourage children to find themselves, and at a certain point, to push them to do more than they think they can. I know that--and yet, it terrifies me sometimes that I'll push my child too much, or too little...

Be that as it may: if he can tap into his own remarkable spirit, it's probably up to me to just get out of the way.