Adam and I were at a holiday party this weekend. We met a bunch of new people and one of them happened to have a daughter Annie's age. We had a fairly long conversation with them about their experience with their daughter and ultimately, parenting style and decisions. This particular parent was fairly rigid in her style. And in typical upscale preschool society style she was gearing the conversation towards a pissing war on milestones. My typical reaction to people like that is congratulate them on the incredible mental abilities their child was blessed with, and keep my kid out of it.
It got me to thinking about how many different type of parents there are out there. There are book parents, who do everything the way the experts tell them to. There are the pediatrician parents who quote the advice their ped gives them as if it were handed to them in a tablet of stone and therefore cannot be deviated from. There are the crunchy parents who rule from a much more creative throne. They feed their children only food grown in their garden, let them run naked through the neighborhood and consider tantrums an expression of creativity and love. There are parents who rule from their gut. They ask questions like, will it kill them? Did I die doing it? There are parents who have free range kids. These are kids who have the run of the land a very young age. They walk to school and back alone in the second grade. They feel the independence will teach them how to be self sufficient. There are helicopter parents who hover over their kids with the fear that if they take their eyes off of them for one second they will disenigrate. And there are parents who are a mix of all of the above. All of these parents rule from a place of love. From what I can see they all produce happy kids, on the whole.
I would say Adam and I are instinctual parents. We take in all of the information we are given and read, and we go with our gut. We break the rules experts give a lot of the time. You have to remember a lot of these people make their money by having an opinion, it does not mean it’s the right one. We follow the letter of the law some of the time. I tend to think that if something worked well for my generation (and we all turned out just fine) it’s going to be fine for Annie.
Parents who make themselves feel bad about when their kids move to a big kid bed, count to 20 or learn how to use a potty crack me up. How many adults do you know who can’t use the bathroom alone or still sleep in a crib. I’m guessing zero. So I don’t worry about things like that.
What Adam and I do worry about is how Annie feels about herself and how she interacts with a group. Is she confident? Can she control her emotions? Is she happy? How does she deal with being told she is incorrect or she can’t do something? (answer: not well. Annie hates to be embarrassed and has since she was like 6 months old) but we work on those things. Annie is far from perfect. I am far from perfect, I am comfortable with this and that takes a lot of pressure off. I worry about whether or not she is healthy, and growing. Does she feel safe at school and at home? These are the things that keep me up at night.
At the age of nearly 3 I am not worried about things like reading skills and math. She is exposed to them, and actually thrives in some of those areas but to be honest I don’t agree with how far down so much of school has been pushed on kids. Remember when you learned to read in kindergarten? Annie learns of all of these things at school and at home but I don’t pay much attention to where she is ahead of others and where she is behind. As long as she is learning and excited by it, I am happy.
I don’t freak out if she watches age appropriate TV. You know what? Sometimes after working a full day, getting her dinner and picking up the house, TV is my savior. It keeps her quiet for 45 minutes while I just sit and collect myself. She gets to watch Dora find her friend Swiper, I get to find my sanity. Win Win. And I am not ashamed to admit it. She still loves to read books, tell stories and draw. She has a delightful vocabulary. What I want for her for the next 2 years is to continue to grow into a happy confident kid. The rest will come, it always does. Your kid may beat my kid. Congrats. My kid may beat your kid, doesn’t mean she will turn out better. I don’t believe all kids should win all of the time, that’s not real life, but I do believe not all kids are going to be good at the same thing, and that’s just fine. I don't want Annie to grow up with a sense that life is fair, and everyone should win. But, I do want her to grow up focusing on her strengths, and realizing she is not going to be good at everything, but she should be good at some things.
Some of the most brilliant toddlers I used to babysit for turned out to be average adults. Some of the dullest kids turned out to be brilliant. I am thrilled to see they all turned out well on the whole. You just can’t control everything. You put your kids in the best environment you can, you give them the best advantages you know of, and you expose them to the world you want them to build for themselves. The rest, I truly believe comes from the drive, confidence and sense of support your child feels.
The other thing I often think about is what is all the pushing for? Of course you want your kids to go to a good school and get a well paying job. That’s a given, I am not denying that any of us don’t want that for our kids. And, we want our kids to do better than us. But the question I ask when I feel guilty over not having Annie in Mandrin classes at age 3, is “to what end?”. Do I want my kid growing up feeling pressured and miserable only to become an adult who isn’t happy unless they are under stress and miserable? Not so much. And that’s the rub. Where do you draw the line? Where do you stop competing with the carpool and just let your kid be a kid for a while? I don’t know the answer, but, I do know that I plan to navigate those waters with Adam and use our common sense and our hearts. I know Annie will make mistakes and I am sure embarrass us. I know that growing up wont be a smooth road. And I am sure I will have my fair share of meltdowns along the way, I only hope we come out strong on the other side like my family did.
I have no idea if Annie will be brilliant, makes loads of money, go to a top school etc. I want all of those things for her of course but more than any of those things I want her to be happy, to love us, and to be able to support herself in whatever lifestyle makes her heart sing. And of course, to be able to use the bathroom alone, count to 20, and sleep in a bed by herself.
To all my fellow parents out there, happy trails. And remember, just because your kid was the first in the class to find China on a map, doesn’t mean he wont also be the first one to bite his best friends face, or cut off all her hair. We dont have perfect kids and we are surely not all perfect parents.
