What do you really want for your children? Week 1

I am blogging a book about parenting with Krista at The Silent K and a group of other interested and interesting bloggers. This is week one, the introduction, only two days late which is pretty good going I’d say.

What struck me first about the introduction (a part of the book I often skim, if I read it at all. I mean, if it’s important, it’s in the book, right?) was Wayne Dyer (WD) admitting his lifelong affection for and joy in children. He described how he loves to play with them, how at parties he will be with them, how their play transcends culture and language. It seemed, he explained, a small jump from there to writing about children.

I do not like children. This is a handicap as a parent, as it was a handicap as a child since I didn’t like children even then. I find playing with them dull, negotiating with them exhausting and really, I’d rather be one of those boring adults reading her book on the beach than mushing about looking for shells. And at a cocktail party, I’d like to have a cocktail and lounge elegantly. You understand, I hope, that I love my children. But I make myself play with them because I love them and not because I really want to. I’m better at inviting them to bake or garden or read because these are things I’d be doing anyway. I’m just waiting until they can knit.

The next thing that is bouncing around in this haunted library I call a head is how he reiterates that this books is about now because you are here now and your child is now and there is no waiting, there is no future there is only now. Children are not adults-in-waiting. They will not somehow acheive full citizenship someday. When they become adults, they will be adults. And then the now of childhood will be over.

I think I’m down with that. Kind of. In some ways, children are larval, but we do them and us a disservice if all we think of is what is to come. There is so much now between this moment and them cooking us supper. This is the ocean we’re swimming in and if we keep imagining a beach, we’re going to drown. Still, one thing I cling to as a parent is this (and I think WD is saying something similar). I am a person. So are my children. They have a road to walk as do I. As does Ed. Right now those roads are all overlapping and crisscrossing and sometimes it feels like all crossroads and like we’re all trying to take over the only road. But it’s not true. There are four roads here in this house. I am not them, as much as I love them. Their roads are theirs alone, as mine is mine. Sometimes it makes me sad, to perceive their isolation, their separateness from me so clearly. Their aloneness. But what human being isn’t alone? We are all alone. It does not mean that we do not love each other. We do. I love them, and they are still separate from me.

And before I find out what WD thinks I really want for my children, here’s what I think I want for them: to have the strength and ability to be what they want to. To go where they want. To love freely, take risks and recover from setbacks. To have the capacity for great happiness, and for empathy. And to call me every so often and maybe make me some supper when I come to visit.

I’d try to write more but Helena is leaning on my leg, demanding that I take the sewing machine out and begging to type “just this time.” So in the spirit of respecting her personhood, here is Helena:

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