RE: [tips] Can pot make you a better parent?

Jim Matiya Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:59:08 -0700

Dude, 
Parenting is cool....

From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:11:02 -0400
Subject: [tips] Can pot make you a better parent?
To: [email protected]

This appeared in the New York Times recently, and I found myself reading it to
my (now adult - and parents!) children. It's hilarious, but also may give some
food for thought about all of the ways of looking at parenting. (Just in case
you can't access it, I cut and pasted it below my signature.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/opinion/how-pot-helps-parenting.html?_r=0

Beth BenoitGranite State CollegePlymouth State UniversityNew Hampshire

September 7, 2012

Pot for Parents

By MARK WOLFE

San FranciscoTHE youngest of my three daughters was born around the same time I
became a card-carrying medical cannabis patient. Even though I was only 44, I’d
been suffering from occasional back pain. I also suffered bouts of stress,
compounded by anxiety. The causes were unknown, but there seemed to be a
correlation with work deadlines and flying coach with three children under the
age of 5. Sometimes it got so bad I had trouble falling asleep at night,
leaving me groggy and irritable.

So, in 2010, I resolved to seek medical help. I received a thorough physical
examination from my CannaMed doctor, who checked not only my pulse but my blood
pressure as well. Examining the results, he concluded that I would benefit
enormously from a cannabis-based treatment regimen and recommended that I use a
brownie-based form of the drug to avoid the lung irritation associated with
other modes of dose administration. I soon had in my possession a shiny,
state-sanctioned medical marijuana ID card, gaining me free access to the
city’s expanding array of quasi-legal cannabis dispensaries.

After two years of treatment, I can state unequivocally that I feel much better
about pretty much everything. Sure, my back still hurts, but I’m cool with it.

But the best part is an amazing off-label benefit I call Parental Attention
Surplus Syndrome.

Before beginning treatment, I was a dutiful if not particularly enthusiastic
father. Workaday parental obligations were a necessary, unfortunate chore. I
was so stressed out by the end of the day that bedtime, with its interminable
pleas for more stories, songs, sips of water and potty breaks, felt like a
labor to be endured and dispatched as quickly as possible.

Here is what a typical weekday evening exchange between me and my oldest
daughter once looked like:

Child: Daddy, can you show me how to make a Q?Father: (sipping bourbon and
soda, not looking up from iPad) Just make a circle and put a little squiggle at
the bottom.

Child: No, show me!Father: Sweetie, not now, O.K.? Daddy’s tired.

It’s different now:Child: Daddy, can you show me how to make a Q?

Father: (getting down on the floor) Here, I’ll hold your hand while you hold
the pen and we’ll make one together. There! We made a Q! Isn’t it fantastic?

Child: Thanks, Daddy!Father: Don’t you just love the shape of this pen?

It’s the same with my middle child:Before:

Child: Can I watch a video?Father: Of course!

After:Child: Can I watch a video?Father: Why don’t we read a story and then
pretend we’re in our own video! Go pick out a book, and I’ll go get the finger
puppets.

I swear I am a more loving, attentive and patient father when I take my
medication as prescribed. Perhaps this isn’t surprising. As anyone who inhaled
during college can attest, cannabis enhances the ability to perceive beauty,
complexity and novelty in otherwise mundane things (grout patterns in your
bathroom floor, the Grateful Dead, Doritos), while simultaneously locking you
into a prolonged state of rapt attention. You not only notice the subtle color
variations in your cat’s fur, you stare at them in loving awe for 20 solid
minutes.

I submit that this can be enormously salutary to the parent-toddler
relationship. Beyond food, shelter and clothing, what do small children need
most from their parents? Sustained, loving, participatory attention. Thank you,
Doctor.

No doubt some of you are tut-tutting that I should use meditation or yoga or
Zen mindfulness to achieve this. Point taken, and if I had a full-time staff of
cooks and nannies, I’m sure I’d give all that a whirl. But the reality is that
my wife and I are raising multiple tots on modest incomes in a small space in a
very expensive city. No time for Tantra.

And I’m not suggesting that all stressed-out fathers should just get baked. You
might even get a ticket for it in some states. And let’s not forget the health
risks, which are rumored to possibly exist. I’ve heard that even a small amount
of marijuana can impair short-term memory function. It might also affect
short-term memory function.

But for me, at least, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. I find the time
I spend with my children to be qualitatively different and simply more fun when
I take my medicine (always in private, never in front of them, never too much).
I am able to become a kid again, to see things through my daughters’ eyes and
experience, if I’m lucky, the wonder of each new game, each new object and
sound, as they do.

Deeply embedded voices of authority in my head do still caution that I may be
hurting my kids in ways I can’t see. But I just can’t imagine how it could
possibly be worse for them than the consequences of their father’s former
stress-fueled frustration and withdrawal. When I’m rolling around the floor
with my giggling daughters, clicking into an easy dynamic of goofy happiness
and love, I feel it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Mark Wolfe is an art dealer.

RE: [tips] Can pot make you a better parent?

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