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This Slate article on children sharing caught my attention because I have been annoyed at the parental hypervigilance and — dare I say — interference in children’s interactions with each other. You know, a parent swooping in and demanding that little Bobby share the Play-Dough with little Susie, who sidled over and grabbed it from Bobby’s hands. Of course until now, sharing hasn’t been an issue in this house, as only yesterday my kid was able to actually let go of the block he put into my hand, so my opinions are far more theoretical at this point. But the article brings up important questions: at what point do we step in to help our children learn to share, and at what point do we sit back and let them figure it out? Where is the balance between being polite and being interfering with it comes to other people’s kids? What age is modeling going to work, and what do we/I do until then?
I surely don’t know, but I guess I use this as a warning shot, of sorts, that I am more likely to sit back and let my child figure things out for himself amongst his peers. Obviously I would step in to prevent injury or to deescalate a bad fight, but I like the idea of kids experiencing gain and loss, of struggling to understand their own power. But you know what? This view of parenting may make my child incompatible with other kids (or, more likely, it may make me incompatible with their parents). He may be seen as a bully or a jerk and I might be seen as a Bad Parent if I take this tack. But I strongly believe that we learn better through experience, not verbal remonstration. Teaching when they’re ripe for it, not green, as the article discusses.
It’s going to be like trying to find firm footing in a marsh, this theory of letting my kid understand power via experience. I suppose the best thing that I can do is ask other parents, Do you want me to step in, or can we let them figure this out? But parents I see on the playground are so quick to jump in before other parents, almost as if they’re competing to see who can be Most Involved, as if that makes them a better parent, so I can’t imagine they will respond well to my approach. And I certainly don’t argue the opposite, that neglect produces “better” or more creative children. I just want to find that middle, somewhat squishy ground where my kid can develop his understanding of power naturally, operate within the parameters of a semi-polite society, but where we his parents serve as guides, not dictators or interventionists. That balance just seems incredibly tricky, if not impossible, to find.
I know this blog isn’t a hotbed for discussion, but I would welcome thoughts and experience on this topic, as it’s one I’m just beginning to contemplate.
§ August 23rd, 2011 § Filed under family Enter your password to view comments.
§ March 15th, 2011 § Filed under boy genius, family Enter your password to view comments.
Let’s say there are two political parties whose symbols are, for example, skunks and porcupines — both indigenous to North America, both with few predators save the occasional lost mama grizzly bear wandering down from Alaska. Now say you used to think the Skunk party was the one that was True and Good and Right and that Porcupines were gnawing apart the Fabric of Society, but evidence and experience and, well, logic led you, in the end, to actually prefer the spiny side. Say you marry and your husband — who dabbled in Red Fox philosophy for a bit in college — has had a similar experience: Both of you come from families of hardcore Skunks, and both families don’t quite understand why you prefer the herbivorous rodent philosophy to its odiferous counterpart.
You have nothing against Skunks, per se; you think some of their ideas are okay, although they seem a bit too black and white for your taste (you believe the quill is mightier than the anal gland, for example), but the Skunks you grew up with were wonderful people and you bear none of them any personal ill will. In the end, both are trying to coexist in the same general habitat even though they have quite different ways of expressing themselves.
So would you be at all suspicious when your families keep giving your child textiles with skunks on them? Bath towels, blankets, and shirts? Is this some sneaky rhetorical persuasion they’re attempting? Or do porcupines simply not have the same childish appeal and family values as their symbolic counterparts?
Lately I’ve been disinclined to write about a lot of topics, mainly including my little family. This is primarily a concern I have because of where I work. So right now I’m batting around a few ideas: going back to an anonymous blog, not blogging, and/or beefing up my privacy settings, which would require readers to have a password to see my posts. This concern is also the reason I don’t use Boy Genius’s real name, and I respectfully request that no one else does, either, until I decide how to proceed.
My mom likes to tell a story to illustrate the personalities of my siblings and me growing up. If we were not doing as she asked, one of her parenting methods was to count to five, and if we didn’t do it by five, then there were Consequences.
My sister is the eldest. Mom only had to threaten to count and my sister would dissolve into tears. “Don’t count, Mommy! Don’t count! I’ll do it!” And after the drama subsided, she would run along. That’s probably why she practiced her music so diligently, later earning medal after medal at music festivals in preparation for a successful career in music, and why she never got suspended from boarding high school.
My brother was the middle child, and he discovered that Mom was soft enough to use fractions: “One. Two. Three. Four. Four and a half. Four and three-quarters.” Probably when Mom broke out the sixteenths, he’d go do whatever it was he was supposed to do, knowing that she’d lose her patience as the math got progressively harder. This early scientific probing into the limits of possibility combined with the mathematical education it offered is likely what propelled him to medical school and beyond.
And then there’s me. The way the story goes, my mom only tried counting with me the one time. She put a hand on her hip and held up a finger: “One.” And then I piped up, “Two! Three! Four! Five! Hmph!” and planted both hands on my hips and glared back at her, Consequences be damned. (This from the same child who cried when she wasn’t allowed to leave the table before eating her lima beans and finally, an hour later, still sitting at the table, took her dad up on his offer to “give you something to really cry about.”) My utter lack of concern for profitable outcomes sufficiently explains, I think, why I majored in English.
I bring this up because we’ve reached the end of the pregnancy countdown: The baby is forty weeks today (“Thirty-eight,” Matt would say), and I fully expected to have him by now. But it seems that he has a little bit of me in him, as just right now he’s doing a headstand on my bladder and, instead of counting contractions, he’s keeping score of his kicks to my spleen: “Two, three, four, five, hmph!”
Me: Oh, hey, if you’re calling your mom, find out if [names redacted] are coming to the shower this weekend.
Husband: Okay.
Me: But don’t tell her I asked! It’s not my job to pry.
Husband: Right.
[He dials, his mom answers, they exchanges pleasantries]
Husband: Chelsey was talking to her mom and they were wondering who all is coming to the shower this weekend — glarbl, glug, gulpey, oof
[Wife releases husband's throat]
The end.
(Okay, not much of one)
I admit that a very small (teensy, really) part of my liking for the boy’s name we have mostly settled on is that it would sound great if an NFL sportscaster were announcing it as part of the Broncos starting lineup. What can I say — I have a sickness.
me: ohmygod, how are we going to know what to do with it when the thing gets here?
soon-to-be-father-of-our-child: y’know, awhile ago in a moment of angst i asked you the same thing. you said all we have to do is feed it and change its diaper, and as it grew more complicated, we’d learn what to do.
me: …
me: well…don’t throw my words back in my face!
father-to-be: obama’s a muslim!
I do not know if memory is serving or disserving me, but I recall some time ago when my sister offered me a teapot that had been our grandmother’s. I was excited to have something of hers, as she died when I was six and I barely remember her. What I do remember is the scent of my grandma’s perfume and the six-packs of bottled Diet Pepsi we would keep in our basement for her, which she used to wash down her pain meds as she died of cancer. I guess the theory — aided and abetted by my grandfather, M.D. — was that the caffeine helped the medicine kick in faster. Indeed, Excedrin and other headache meds often have caffeine as an ingredient, so my backcountry doctor-grandfather may have been right.
Anyway, I gladly accepted the gift. My grandparents enjoyed collecting the finer things in life: gems and crystals, pottery, jewelry (which of course they never wore, being staunch E.G. White-thumping Adventists), and I assumed that this teapot was a treasure they had picked up on one of their many travels, perhaps in China or, given the design of the pot, England. So today, as I beheld the pile of grading ahead of me, I decided the only way through this involved tea.
I lifted down the pot and took awhile to examine it. It is ceramic and cream-colored, with a wicker-like texture (the kind you may have seen in wedding cakes frosted back in the 1980s). On its front are a few pink, nondescript flowers clearly envisioned by a ceramic artist who spent most of his time indoors. I would hazard that the flowers are something of a cross between roses and camelias, with perhaps the stamen of hibiscus thrown in for artiness.
I am very careful whenever I handle this teapot, as it has an elegant spout that pours well (something that can not be said for every other teapot I’ve owned) and I don’t want to chip any part of the squat little thing. Yet today, as I rinsed it carefully in the sink, when I turned it over I noticed the following inscription on the bottom:
So much for a family heirloom. Now instead of the spirit of my dearly departed grandmother inspiring me to finish grading, all I can think about is how overpriced and ugly nearly every Teleflora arrangment is that I’ve seen. And given the date on the stamp — 1985 — this was probably sent as a gift to my grandmother just after she’d been diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. Thanks a lot, fate.
From That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo:
She pointed at the wall, specifically at an indentation in the plaster that looked to be about the same size as a college dean’s forehead.
I won’t even give you the context. It’s good, but sometimes one’s imagination is even better.
In related bits, a friend introduced me to My Parents Were Awesome. While I understand that my parents were once my age (in fact, my mom and I met right about the time she was my age now), I’ve never really seen pictures of them without us kids. And now I really want to know what they were like.
In unrelated news, Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck impersonation was downright inspiring. It’s not that he’s making fun of Glenn Beck — it’s that he’s taking every rhetorical strategy of Beck’s and illustrating how ludicrous they are: the word association schemes, the crazy diagrams, the appearance of being well-read without the information to back it up, the crying, the screaming, the hand-waving and -wringing — all these are ways Beck tries (and logically fails) not so much to win but to shut down arguments. That’s the beauty of this — not that it’s funny, but that it’s true.
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