Tucked away in our post-delivery room, our new family basked in the glow of our newborn baby and hospital florescent light. Ryan was all of 36 hours old and laying in his bassinet content to be stared at by his parents. Various nurses, doctors, and staff would cycle through the room to check vitals, perform healthy baby exams, and attain birth certificate signatures. During what seemed to be a routine stop, a doctor told Jenni and I that Ryan had a shorter than average lingual frenulum. For those of you away from your anatomy books, your lingual frenulum is the fold that connects your tongue to the bottom of your month. If this fold is too short, it can produce the condition known as “tongue-tied.” The doctor explained to us that this was certainly not an extreme case. The risk down the road was difficulty speaking due to the inability to form certain sounds that involve the tongue. The solution was an elective surgery to cut the frenulum to allow the tongue more range of motion. (Ouch!) While by no means a medical emergency, the time to do it was sooner as opposed to later.
Not two days into our parenthood, Jenni and I had to wrestle with the consideration of the lingual frenectomy. (Personally, I think frenectomy kind of sounds like what people do when they cut away ancillary Facebook friends.) After thoughtful consideration, we elected not to go through with this procedure. Looking at Ryan, perhaps it just seemed that he’d be able to work through any linguistic challenges. Even if he couldn’t, we thought it wasn’t worth subjecting him to that level of pain. Like I said, this was by no means a pressing medical dilemma, but a tough decision for us as new parents nonetheless. We passed on the surgery, figured out how to operate the car seat, and took Ryan home a day later.
Ryan recently finished elementary school and I think it’s fair to say that he’s not suffering any ill effects form his short lingual frenulum. For those of you who know him, “tongue-tied” is probably not one of the ways you would describe our oldest child. He’s a loquacious and verbose kid and of all the challenges he’ll face in life, speaking is not likely to be one of them. (Quite frankly, there are probably times we wouldn’t mind if he talked less.) So, some 12 years later I think we can say passing on the elective tongue surgery was a fantastic call. Hooray Jenni and Steve–decision making giants!
…or not. I mean, what would happened if we did decide to have the surgery? After some tears (some of them from Ryan), our lives probably would have played out pretty similarly. Ryan would learn to talk and perhaps the increased tongue mobility would make ice cream cones easier to manage. But for the most part, not much would change from the version we opted for. But in the clipped frenulum version, Jenni and I would be thinking, “Sure it was painful at the time, but good thing we had that surgery done!”
We grapple with parenting decisions every day–what our kids eat, when to send them to bed, how much screen time is appropriate. Additionally, parents grapple with meatier decisions with more on the line than tongue mobility. How do we, as parents, evaluate those decisions and when can we determine the quality of our decision making? Based on the narrative I told, we can conclude the we made the “right” decision in 2007. Since Ryan had no trouble leaning to speak, there was no need for him to participate in an elective surgery as a baby. (The Internet is conflicted on how much pain infants experience during this procedure.) At any rate, we’re left with a tremendous case of outcome basis–that the aftermath of a decision determines the quality of the decision. But what about the “beforemath”? How do we know we’re making the right decision at the point of decision making? Consider the blackjack player who makes the right move “by the book” but loses the hand. Based on the current information available at the time, didn’t our gambler make the “right” decision?
There’s two phenomena that are impacting my decision making that I don’t think my parents dealt with. The Big Data/Yelp culture provides seemingly infinite data points for any decision and begs the question that any answer can be derived by simply doing enough research. While the subtlety of context may be lost, we can optimize our happiness by simply choosing the higher rating. We’ll buy the refrigerator averaging 4.36 stars instead of the one averaging 4.17 stars. Our kid will go to the school with the best ratings. And if there are not ratings on the specific options we’re considering for our child–there’s no shortage of parenting opinions just beyond the Google search bar.
The Internet also contributes to the other modern decision-making factor; the red state/blue state, zero-sum game of any decision in our lives. So many choices in parenting, or life, are being present as “This or that,” suggesting that there’s winners and losers with every decision. Humor me and consider the Twilight movie series for a moment. With the release of second film, there was the cultural experience of fans aligning with “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob.” This is my first memory of the term “Team Blank” being used to describe a preference. The only problem is the term “team” suggests a game with definitive winners and losers, which is an unproductive model.
When we consider this “Team” phenomena outside of vampires and werewolves we have modern contests like “Team Stay-at-Home-Mom” vs “Team Career Parent,” “Team Home School vs Team Traditional School,” or “Team Refined Sugar is Evil vs Team Chocolate Chip Cookie.” And as we discuss these choices at school pick ups and happy hours, it just feels like the battle lines have been drawn, choices are mutually exclusive, and it’s time to pick a side. Every choice seems like vote seems like a chance to tip the electoral map in your favor. A Facebook friend and new mom recently posted “..who buys milk (cow’s milk) and why? This will settle a debate..” and there’s 68 , 99, 120 comments! The “debate” was with her husband (ie parenting decision) and very quickly the thread turned into “Team Almond vs Team Cow.”
At the very least, the ability to publicly and efficiently present our opinion on social media has produced more discussions, but who’s actually listening? In the face of everyone stumping for their choices, it sometimes feels like we have to pound our chests for attending public school, allowing Nerf guns in the house, or eating at McDonalds. Any choices Jenni and I make are best in terms of being best for our children. I am happy to discuss with you the merits of charter schools, the causes of school shootings, and childhood obesity and what I value most is an open and honest exchange of ideas. It just feels like sometimes people are trying to convert me to their side instead of respectfully disagreeing. At the end of day, I don’t need to know what kind of white liquid you douse your cereal with and your reasons why.
Whew! That escalated quickly. The point is that parents are making decisions overloaded with input in a hyper-charged political environment. With all that noise, it’s important to remember your core, gut values and let every decision flow through them. Friend of the blog, Niels Schroeter, has his family’s values needlepointed, framed, and proudly displayed within their home. Listed within tenants of the “Schroeter Family Mission” are “become the best we can be,” “Give something back to the world,” and my personal favorite – “Watch the ball.” The Matsumotos haven’t committed any values to embroidery and perhaps we should. My only concern I have is the quality of the young litigators in our household. I can just hear Chase defending his older brother, “If it pleases the court, let’s agree there’s inherent conflict between the directives ‘use kind words’ and ‘be honest.’ In commenting on tonight’s dinner, my client was merely being honest and should the words ‘repulsive’ or ‘disgusting’ in the context of Brussel sprouts not be deemed kind by tonight’s chef, should he be faulted for following a posted moral imperative?”
I just surveyed the boys and asked them what they thought our household values are. Ryan’s first response was “make smarter decisions.” It sounds a bit teacher-y, but I suppose we could do much worse. We talked for awhile and it occurred to me that Ryan doesn’t really have problems forming either ideas or letter sounds. I’m glad we didn’t mess with kid’s lingual frenulum when he was an infant. Passing on that procedure was a good decision. But I could have told you that 12 years ago.
