Monday, January 2, 2012

Abnormal Parenting: Addressing the persistent and pervasive criticisms that my parenting style inspires among the non-believers.

I’m often frustrated by criticisms friends and family have of my child-rearing.  I put a lot of thought into how I treat my kids, what sorts of media they are exposed to, what activities they participate in and the people that they spend time with.  I consider who they are, their personalities and their talents and weaknesses, and I think about the tools that they will need, not just to survive but to live well in the future.  When someone makes some glib remark undercutting the hours of research and deliberations I have done it definitely puts my panties in a wad.

My parenting philosophy is as follows:

As a mother, it is my job to physically, emotionally and intellectually prepare my children to be financially independent, socially responsible assets to their community.

Sounds good but the doing is a little more complex, right?  Especially when people throw out smart-a… alecky comments, telling me how I’m doing it wrong.

Criticism #1:  All a kid needs is to know that she is loved.

                The above comment is delivered meaningfully, often accompanied by an eye-roll and translates as:  “You’re putting too much pressure on your kid and she’s going to freak out when she’s a teenager, totally rebel and make you look like an OCD idiot.”

                Yes.  A child DOES need to know that she is loved.  But is it “loving” to have no expectations?  To not set boundaries?  To not ask your child to work, to learn, to broaden her horizons, to grow and live up her potential?

                Let’s follow this argument out to its logical conclusion:

                A child that knows that she is loved, and nothing else, will eventually turn 18, maybe graduate from the free education that our government provides, maybe not.  She will not have ever been asked to complete a task, to be accountable for her time or her actions, to follow through on obligations and responsibility. 

In other words, that very much loved child is now completely unemployable.  She cannot keep a job!  So who is going to pay for this very much loved child?  You!!!  Or maybe she’ll find a partner with the qualities she is lacking and they will pay for your child’s needs.  Or maybe she will live off the state and everyone will pay for your loved child.

It is certainly possible that a child who has been the victim of this sort of lassiez-faire parenting will muddle through her early adult years, learn the hard lessons on her own and eventually succeed.  But, and I’m speaking from personal experience, you are not doing her any favors by not working to the brink of killing yourself and her to teach her those things prior to her entering the world of adulthood. 

My mother tells me that I do everything a decade too late.  Perhaps because I was allowed an infancy that was a decade too long?  (Sorry, Mom.  You did the best you knew to do.  Stupid 60’s.)

Criticism #2:  She needs to spend more time with her peers.

                This one sends me totally over the edge.

                Why?  Why does my child need to spend more time with her peers?  Because she needs to involve herself in their wonderful, supportive and ever-so-responsible pastimes of social jockeying, bullying, premature sexuality and the goading of one another into eating disorders?  My child is a 13-year-old girl.  When a group of 13-year-old girls spend a bunch of unsupervised, unstructured time together all of the above is what will happen.  Better mention drugs and alcohol just for good measure.   

                For 13-year-old boys all of the above is true but do add arson and destruction of property.

                I’m going to just put this out there and many of my readers are going to be very upset at me.

                My hometown has a crop of kids, particularly girls between the ages of 12 and 16, who are just the best kids in the whole world.  They are smart.  They are successful in school and in their many extra-curricular activities.  They impress the heck out of the adults who work with them.  They have lots of unsupervised free time because, being such good kids, why shouldn’t they?  They are allowed to make their own good choices and learn from them.  We want them to have lots of self-confidence, right?

                These kids, mostly currently in the middle school, are self-confidently dropping acid, swilling booze behind the school, smoking pot, dropping their panties at the drop of a note and basically scaring the crap out of community members who witness these things while their parents are busy being upstanding citizens and making a living.  And because these are good kids from good families, people are terrified to say anything.  I’ve spoken to several people who have shared their concern over the behavior of friends’ kids.  The best solution I’ve heard put forth is an anonymous letter reporting on the witnessed behavior.  But who believes anything bad a stranger would say about your kid?

                No.  My daughter does not need to spend a lot of unsupervised free-time with kids her age.  Thank you very much.  It isn’t that kids are bad, it is that they are kids.  This philosophy also informs my reasons why my daughter is not allowed to have a cell-phone or a Facebook page until she is 14 or unsupervised access to the internet until she is 16.

Criticism #3:  You shouldn’t make your kid do stuff if she doesn’t want to.

                Really?  Like brush her teeth or wash her hands after wiping her ass?  Give me a break.

                The implication here is that I force my child to participate in extra-curricular activities because I enjoy doing them and that my poor kid is the victim of my…  social climbing?  Career building?  Political ambitions?  Yeah.  Okay.

                The truth is that my daughter’s activities have been very valuable for me educationally.  I am going into education as a career-field, after all.  But do tell me, how is my daughter’s participation in Girl Scouts, band, sports, art lessons and community service a bad thing?

                There was a time when she did not want to do any of the above mentioned activities.  Actually, her favorite activity was nothing.  She preferred to be left to her own devices to perhaps read, perhaps doodle, perhaps watch a movie (thank goodness we don’t have television), and perhaps stare at the ceiling “self-narrating.”  No.  I am not kidding.  My daughter was dangerously ensconced in a fantasy world that, according to her psychologist back when she was still in counseling to help her with the transition between her father’s custody and mine, was created as a coping mechanism and had grown to be far more comfortable, happy and “real” to her than her actual real life.  (She has since been certified “sane,” just for everyone’s information.  How many people can say that?)  Because of her preference for her Happy Na-Na Land, I have spent the last three years forcing my kid to do stuff that other children beg to participate in.

                The upshot has been that my daughter has become a good basketball player whose skills and hard work are remarked on by coaches of other teams.  She is becoming a fairly good artist, a good flautist, and she was given a community award for her service work, she has built a network of adults who consider her to be a talented asset to their organizations and she’s recently been accepted, after a rigorous application process, by the Girl Scout Destination program to visit Peru.

                My daughter is going into High School next year already prepped to engage in meaningful extracurricular activities which will not only build her social network (in a positive way) but pad her resume and college application.

                I think those first two years of cattle prodding has paid off.

Criticism #4:  Why can’t you just let her be a normal kid?

                Shut.  Up. 

Or, at the very least, define “normal.”

Normal in Japan or China for a middle class girl:  She’d be routed toward a college prep middle school which would emphasize her skills (if not like) in math and science.  She would spend the majority of her time engaged in academic pursuits with her “free” time taken up with activities that emphasize her talent and engagement with fine arts and she would be engaged in at least one athletic club.  She would leave the house prior to 6am and not return until after 8pm.  She probably would already have made a firm decision on a career.

Normal in Afghanistan for a middle class girl:  If she is lucky, she would be shipped to a boarding school in Europe to pursue an education probably focused on liberal arts or the medical profession.  If she was a really brave kid, she’d plan on coming back to her home community to risk her life and be a teacher or a doctor.  If not, she’d probably plan on staying in Europe.   I wouldn’t blame her.

Normal in Kenya:  She’d be married and working for her husband’s family.

                Normal in the U.S. thirty years ago:  She might be thinking about college.  In this community, she might be thinking of a career in nursing, teaching or as a flight attendant.  Somewhere far away.

                Normal in the U.S. fifty years ago:  She’d be thinking about getting married and having babies.

                Normal in the U.S. seventy years ago:  She’d be thinking about going to work in a city as a secretary or a receptionist then getting married and having babies.

                Do you get my point?

                Normal is what we decide it is.  I have decided that it is normal for my daughter to work her little booty off to prepare for her future so that she can live a productive and meaningful life and not depend on others to care for her needs or “make” her happy.

Criticism #5:  Not everyone has the time/resources to put in to doing all that stuff with their kids.

                This one I totally understand and agree with and feel very guilty about.  That is why I love doing community service with and for other people’s kids because, let’s face it, somebody has to work for a living!

                One thing that I have found to be a very valuable parenting tool/touchstone is a program here in Alaska called Alaska ICE (Initiative for Community Engagement).  It is a research based informational program based around “assets” that have been found among kids who are considered to be successful (ie they do not engage in risky behaviors).  I am a firm believer in this program and I especially love how it does not require extra money or a lot of extra time for families who cannot afford it.  The basic philosophy is that everyone contributes to happy, healthy kids and everyone can contribute to happy, healthy kids.

                If you do nothing else, please check out their list of Assets.  I have purchased both books, the one for kids and the one for little kids, and have found them full of interesting, creative suggestions to develop “assets” in the lives of my own children.  While the program is designed especially for Alaskans, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be pertinent to any family.

                To conclude, parenting for me is a very cerebral exercise.  I spend A LOT of time thinking about the education of my children and I work very hard to engage them in meaningful ways.  Yes, I love them to bits and I often wish that we could all be a big, happy pile of affection, friends first so that we can always, you know, talk to each other.  However, my job, first and foremost, is to be their mother.  With all of the hard work, yelling, gray hair, frown-wrinkles and banging my head against this desk that that entails.

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