>When Good Intentions Go Bad

>I’ll admit, I used to do it all the time.

“Do you remember the names of Columbus’s three ships?” Hubs would gently prod my then eight-year-old back in the days when I was a desperately eager, brand-spanking-new stepmom.

“I do!” I’d say excitedly. “The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria!” Hubs would sigh and give me a look over my stepdaughter’s head.

“That’s right, Lindsay,” he’d say. “How did you get to be so smart?” I’d look down guiltily, my face turning crimson.

With my husband’s pointed looks and not-so-gentle reminders, it didn’t take me very long to let my young stepdaughters answer on their own the “tough” questions others posed to them. (Letting them win at board games was a different matter altogether, to my husband’s consternation, but that’s another story for another time.)

By the time I became a mom, I had learned to keep quiet when The Professor asked the kids at our library’s storytime what colors make a rainbow. My lips remained sealed as Punky’s art teacher wondered aloud where the horns should go on Punky’s construction paper giraffe. I even stayed mum when Diego asked which item in his backpack would help rescue the baby seal.

And I can laugh now at the other new parents who still haven’t quite gotten it down.

Take this past Saturday, when Punky and I attended a children’s theater production of Thumbelina. The actors periodically stopped and asked the crowd of preschoolers questions like, “What season is it?” as snow fell on the four-year-old Thumbelina and a wind whistled across the stage. Before any of the children in the audience could pipe up, a dad on the other side of the auditorium helped them out.

“It’s Winter!” he shouted joyfully. “Winter!”

The actor on stage chuckled a bit, squinting into the dark audience before continuing. “Is Thumbelina hot?”

“No!” the dad shrieked. “She’s COLD!”

“Who can save Thumbelina from all this snow, children?” the actor asked pointedly.

“The sparrow!” The father bellowed. “THE SPARROW CAN SAVE THUMBELINA!”

From my seat, I snickered. This wasn’t the first time I had seen a parent get caught up in the kiddie action, but typically, that parent was of the female persuasion, and quite obviously realized her gaffe right after shrieking, “A circle is ROUND!” in front of the entire Gymboree class. This dad, on the other hand, was clearly a rookie of the highest order, probably some weekend warrior spending an hour or two of quality time with the kids before he put in another eighty hours at work. Caught up in the pomp and pageantry of Thumbelina, he was like a snowball rolling down a mountain, only growing bigger and faster as it goes along.

“SINNNNNG! SING A SONNNNNNG!” he sang off-key along with the four-year-old Thumbelina as she warbled into a microphone on the stage. “SING IT LOUD!!!! SING IT STRONNNNNNNG!!!!!”

“Does anyone see the mole?” Thumbelina asked the audience once she had finished her unexpected duet, holding her tiny palms up in well-rehearsed supplication.

“I do!” the man said loudly. “He’s over there! Over there!” Craning my neck along with the other parents, I could just barely make the dad out on the other side of the theater, balancing his son on his knee and pointing out the mole to him, lest the kid be forced to, you know, think for himself.

I imagine this dad five years from now. By then, he’ll have graduated to coaching his son from the sidelines of the soccer game. “Move to the center, Reginald!” he’ll yell, even as the coach attempts to tells the kid to guard the goal. “Do you hear me?” the dad will shout as his son hesitates. “I said MOVE TO THE CENTER!”

A few years after that, he’ll be that dad who does his kid’s science projects for him. You can always pick out the handmade-by-dad projects on Parent’s Night. They’re the ones with meticulously matted pictures and perfectly-formatted summaries glued carefully onto professional display boards, the ones that would look more at home at the head of a boardroom table than they do amid the hand-printed, flimsy posters of the other sixth graders.

Maybe, though, someone will be brave enough to try and stop him, just as my husband once had to put the kibosh on me. Across the auditorium, I see a woman turn from her seat and say something to him as the sparrow whisks Thumbelina off to Fairyland. He keeps quiet for the rest of the show. It takes a village, I suppose, to make idiots like us let our kids figure out a thing or two for themselves.