Colorado 1, Jersey 0

It is snowing today. That's not uncommon in my life. In Colorado it often snows before/on Halloween. The difference is now that it is snowing here it means buckle down for cold misery for the next 4-5 months, whereas in Colorado it could be in the 70s again next week. At least the kids are excited.

Reality Check

According to the parenting and child development e-mail my boss forwards to me, a 23 month old (which B is) might be putting together three word sentences.
Yesterday B said to me "I'm not swiping your headband, I'm just putting it in my princess purse." She also said after her bath toy fell off the side into the tub, "He's in the pool now. He's supposed to be exercising."
She sure is a cute little smarty pants.

An Unqualified Theory

N brought home a behavior form today from Kindergarten. Apparently he laughed at a kid and wasn't following directions. His mom got an email from his teacher that she wants to have a phone conference on Monday. This got me to thinking about child rearing. Clearly I have a whole heck of a lot of impact on how these kids are being raised. As nannies go I think I'm attentive and tracking with the parents as far as discipline and boundaries and all that. N basically just doesn't listen. He doesn't do REALLY bad or malicious things, he simply doesn't follow directions. I imagine his teacher thinking that the fact he spends more time with his nanny than his parents is a partial explanation for his behavior. I have an alternate (and highly unqualified theory):
Every kid is entirely unique, as is every parent. You put the parenting method spectrum (you know, discipline technique, how much chaos you can handle etc.) on the x axis. Put the kid-being spectrum (mischief, mayhem, ability to sit still for 30+ seconds) on the y axis. If by some miracle the points plot at 0, 0 you have perfect parenting/child-being combo. At any other point its more or less a crap shoot. After 18 or so years of some combination of tickles and time-outs and yelling and laughing and demanding and respecting the kid will inevitably either turn out somewhere between fantastic and dead-beat. The okay-ness of the adult will be partly because of and partly in spite of the parenting method. Clearly there are outliers, especially in the parenting methods, that are pretty much guaranteed to turn out badly. In general though, I think everyone just has to do the best they can with what comes naturally and pray for the best.
Maybe I'm just trying to clear myself of any possible culpability for N's behavior. If that's the case it would probably suffice remind everyone that he had 3 other nannies before me, not to mention two parents. I love him, but I'm not sad when the weekend comes around and I get to not be a "parent".