What do you really want for your children? Week 2
I am blogging a book about parenting with Krista at The Silent K and a group of other interested and interesting bloggers. This is the second week.
In this, the first chapter, Wayne Dyer suggests (in an inaccurately small nutshell) that the best way to have happy (content, non-neurotic, productive and so on) children is to BE happy (content, non-neurotic, productive and so on). To lead by example.
On the whole, I agree. No good boxing a child’s ears because he hit his sister. Only lesson there is that he who hits hardest wins. If you want your child to eat his veggies, eat your own. If you want a child to say thank you, you say it. If you want your child to be a good sport, be a good sport.
I know this and secretly, I don’t like it. I feel like I only just escaped my own parents’ house with the rules and regulations, the being polite, the eating my vegetables and the no-watching-stupid-TV rules. The going to bed on time and getting up on time. The doing the dishes directly after supper and turning socks the right way out. Bugger that. I love eating cereal for supper and dropping my laundry on the floor (sometimes). I love not eating steamed broccoli. I love going to bed when I want to. I have waited my WHOLE life to be free. And now I have children and I have to go back to the frackin’ rule book, but in reverse, as it were. I have to cheerfully eat vegetables and make others eat them, turn socks the right way out and clean up underwear. I have to smile while I cook chicken cutlets and be mentally healthy! Be go-get-em! Positive! Well, poo. What if I don’t wanna.
Luckily, I do wanna, at least most of the time. So I don’t mind leading by example. Most of the time. But I would quite like to carry on being flawed. I am not going to strive for personal perfection because that way personal madness lies. I will sulk sometimes. I will choose not to have supper. I will go to bed too late and struggle to wake up in the morning. I will mix a strong gin with a weak tonic. I will be content with being flawed.
So Wayne Dyer exhorts us to be no-limit — to seek fewer material gains and more emotional wealth and I agree with that. I strive to be like that. But I disagree that magically All will be Well if I pursue this “no-limit” thing. There is no magic. Just people. Just living our lives.
And different people parent differently. I admire and envy those people who really like children. They become parents and are pleased as punch. Do it well. Invent clever games with a piece of string and a muffin tin. It’s wonderful that they’re out there. These are the people who become nursery school teachers (a calling if ever there was one). However, they don’t speak my language. I have a friend who has been known to bake brownies with her children at 9:30 at night. Just because they all felt like brownies. I would rather rip both my arms off and feed them to Dr. Evilbrain’s piranas than do anything with a child at 9:30 at night. Neither of us is exactly better than the other — just different. Different people, different parents and therefore, producing different children who will go on to be different people and different parents.
That there are different sorts of people become different sorts of parents is part of why there are so many parenting books out there. If you read them all (as I did, taking them one by one off the shelf in the bookstore, while I sat on the floor and fed Daniel, resting the books on his head) you get seriously weirded out. To have a contented, healthy baby you must feed on demand, feed to a schedule, breastfeed, bottle feed, never give solids before a year, give solids from four months, comfort them when the cry, not at night, not when they’ve fed, all the time, never put them down, swaddle them, let them kick, keep them in bed, give them a crib, cloth diaper them, hold them over pots, stimulate their senses, keep them in quiet dark rooms, take them to the movies, the restaurant, the dinner party, take them to babygyms, vaccinate them, never vaccinate them, get their heads massaged, show them black and white patterns, sing to them, play them music, leave them alone. I swam crazily and completely crazed through a huge sea of parenting advice. I felt resistant to the demands placed on me by some advisors and equally resistant to the more lackidaisical approach of others.
For example, I read Dr. Sears (all that attachment parenting goings-on) when I first had Daniel and had been awake for four and a half months straight. Dr. Sears wanted me to take Daniel into my bed, feed him whenever he wanted to be fed (that is, all the time) and make sure he didn’t cry (which is what he did whenever he wasn’t feeding and sometimes he did both at once). I was desperate to get this tiny, howling leech off my body, to sleep alone for a whole night, to perhaps exchange an uninterrupted word with Ed. In short, I did not want to turn my whole life over to this child. Yet, I felt bad, as if I were holding back. As if I were (ha!) not fully embracing motherhood and all its challenges and demands. I wanted to be all that Daniel needed me to be, but not at the cost of any remaining shred of identity. Dr. Sears was guiltily booted.
Wayne Dyer reminds me a bit of Dr. Sears. We shall see how this pans out, but frankly, optimism only goes so far. Being willing to be optimistically imperfect? Sounds good to me.
So well said Stuntmother. So well said.
You know which of the parenting books I liked? The ones that told me what I wanted to hear. That way I could just narrow down to one way to do it – because they all say something different. I’d been listening to everyone’s advice (and don’t we all get plenty when we’re new parents), and was going in five directions.
I liked Dr. Sears’ stuff, because it felt the most right to me, and it did work for me – with Zach. The kid was 13 months old and still waking a hundred times a night, whether I left him crying or not (Zach didn’t read the parts that said he was supposed to learn to put himself to sleep, btw). The first night I brought him to our bed (I shoved our king-sized bed against a wall and folded up a blanket for a bolster), HE SLEPT. All. Night.
Hannah, of course, wanted none of it after the first month or so – she’d read the material, and was willing to start sleeping on her own asap. Keith was a weiner in our bed or in his, and the “leaving him crying” for a few nights worked for him. I am still stunned at how very differently they all responded – there is no right or wrong. There’s only what works with what child. And only you know that! (Take that, Sears, Dyer and the rest.)
Optimistically imperfect. I like it.
I’m still trying to get hold of this book, but maybe it’s better just to hear other peoples views?!
Surely the whole point of ‘leading by example’ is that you can’t be perfect all the time – only eat healthy food, only be happy and content, only be patient and non-frustrated. Life isn’t like that. Surely it’s more helpful for children to learn that
life is about doing the best you can, and reaching compromises(including bending/forgetting rules sometimes. So that you have a range of skills and responses to fit different situations that life throws at you. I don’t want to lead Ellie by example into feeling that she is a failure – striving for emotional (or physical) perfection which will never be achievable 100% of the time.
Why is it that MEN are always writing these books?
WHY?
If/when/whatever I have kids, these shall be the rules I adapt:
1. Don’t sit on the baby
2. Feed the baby when it looks/acts hungry.
3. Don’t shake the baby.
4. Don’t give the baby rum or vodka or whisky
5. Don’t let the baby go too long in dirty nappies
6. Don’t let the baby cry for too long in public.
7. Don’t swear in front of the baby.
I think these are basic skills that will work with the baby. If I can’t breastfeed, then it’s too bad for the kiddo:it’ll make do.
If the baby has a hard time sleeping, I’ll rock the baby until it sleeps, then will go back to my room. If the baby still can’t sleep, I’ll nudge Michael and make HIM deal with it. This is what I’ll do.
Or, I’ll hire a full time nanny and say, “Here. YOU do it.”
Dammit, I broke Fritz’s rule #7. About 500 times. (Does it still count if I’m not swearing AT them?)
Good luck with number 6, Fritz
Ha, seriously. Especially if you are on a plane. Good luck with number 6.
You’re so right! You just have to follow your gut and do what feels right to you. I too read all the books, mostly so that I wouldn’t end up doing everything the way my mother did. I thought there should be some kind of evolution about how we raise children in my family and since there weren’t many models around I wanted to copy…Dr. Sears, The Baby Whisperer et al seemed suitable candidates. In the end, DH and I have managed to do it our way which mostly consists of keeping the boy fed and dry and to give him as much of what he wants while still getting most of what we want. We try to mostly stick to reasonable expectations like Fritz and everything works out mostly okay. So far ;0)
You are a god send to mommies everywhere. I’ve thought every thought that you published here, and most of the ones in the comments. I hope when OUR children have children, society will be enlightened enough to quit telling us to be bloody perfect and just like someone we’re not.