I'm completely scornful of helicopter parents, but yesterday I was sorely tempted to become one. We were at one of Twelve's volleyball games, this time one for which I had to drive 20 miles to a middle school I hadn't known existed, and she wasn't getting to play much. Not my favorite situation.
Twelve isn't very good at volleyball. However, neither are her teammates. Games are pretty awful: Balls hitting the floor. Serves going straight into the net. Audience members compelled to constant vigilance, lest we be nailed by the frequent strays.
At last week's home game, Twelve played for three minutes by her own calculation. I didn't time it, but that sounds about right. I figured it was because she had missed practice the day before, but it was her birthday and she had discussed it with her coach ahead of time, so I felt like I was being fairly generous to the coach when I reassured Twelve that it was probably her coach's policy to not play you if you missed practice. So, on the way to yesterday's game, we decided that if she wasn't happy with her playing time, I would help her initiate a conversation with her coach about it (more of that middle-class concerted cultivation of future members of the middle class).
In the first game (set? Match? My volleyball experience consisted of one very confused seventh grade season and the sport is still a mystery to me), Twelve played for about seven of the 40 or so serves in the whole thing. There are only a dozen players on the team, so by my estimate, with six girls on the floor (court? Side?) at a time, that means that there's room for everyone to play half the time.
I'm spending two hours and driving 40 miles to watch my daughter sit on the bench eighty percent of the time? I started getting riled up.
Quietly riled up, in an I'm-just-sitting-here-watching manner, busily conducting indignant yet carefully polite conversations in my head. I'd smile sweetly and open with one of those questions that's really a challenge: "Can you give us a sense of your playing time philosophy? I'm hoping that missing practice for her birthday dinner with extended family won't have long-term consequences for Twelve's playing time."
Depending on the coach's response, I'd need to be ready with several good comebacks. If she says she plays the girls based on ability, I'd sling back one of those questions that pretends that I need clarification on something but is really a challenge: "Are there specific skills that Twelve needs to work on that the other players have? I've noticed that all of the players seem to be working on developing the basic skills, so I'm not sure that I understand why Twelve is being singled out." If the coach says that playing time is determined by attitude and effort, I'd be ready to flip it right back around on her: "My sense is that Twelve is demoralized by knowing that she's not going to play very much anyway, so she's not motivated to try very hard. Can you give her some specific suggestions about what she can do that will result in more playing time?"
I was working myself into quite a frenzy when I realized that I was very close to developing the dreaded helicopterous parentitis.
One of my most highly prized parenting moral high grounds is that I'm not a helicopter parent. I don't consider my child to be a fragile snowflake in need of constant hovering attention and advocacy. I'm proudest of the moments when she's sorted things out for herself and told me about it later. As I teach her to navigate the world, I emphasize that things don't always work out perfectly in your favor.
Okay, so what are some other possible explanations for Twelve not getting much playing time? We've already covered the fact that she sucks, but so does everyone else, so that can't be it. She serves underhand, not overhand, but I think her success rate is about the same, so that shouldn't be it.
I'm pretty sure it's Twelve's lack of hustle. All of the volleyball teams that she's been on have shared a very weird culture of shrieking support of hustling. Everything that the players try to do is subject to shrill shrieks and high fives, regardless of its result: You hit the ball over the net? Woo-hoo! You hit the ball into the net? Woo-hoo! You hit the ball out of bounds and knocked off somebody's glasses? Woo-hoo! We won the game? Woo-hoo! Completely futile scurrying about is valued as much as actual accomplishment.
It's absurd. (It's also very bad for our high-frequency hearing, as R reminds us. Between the shrieking, the official's whistle, and the scoreboard horn, there's no way I'm going to be able to hear [insert name of bird with high-frequency song here] when I'm eighty.)
When I played sports in middle school,
I don't think we cheered for pointless hustle just as enthusiastically as we cheered actual success. I wasn't very skilled, to be sure, but my lack of hustle was largely due to the fact that I didn't know what was
going on most of the time. I may not have had the skills, but I definitely couldn't react fast enough to use them if I had. I'm not sure how relevant that might be for Twelve,
and if her experience is similar to mine in that respect, it will be
the very first thing our middle school experiences have had in
common. At any rate, Twelve isn't very aggressive and does not see the point of lunging after a ball she won't possibly be able to get, and I think the coach interprets this as her not hustling and therefore doesn't play her as much.
I probably won't bring this up with the coach. I suppose I could ask her for some skill-building drills that I could help Twelve with at home, but I value my near environment and I'd rather not see it destroyed. I also have a hundred or so pages of a dissertation to write in the next ten months, and no real clue how that's supposed to happen.
It was just scary to realize that it wouldn't be so difficult to fall into the helicopter parent trap. Having a reasonably successful and privileged child has kept me smugly away from feeling like I need to helicopter. Volleyball is one of the only arenas in which Twelve doesn't enjoy high status, and seeing one's child be less-than-good at something isn't easy or fun. I won't go so far as to claim that Twelve's volleyball skills make interactions with the other parents awkward, since my interactions with other parents always feel awkward, but I see how having particularly high-achieving or low-achieving children would affect one's attitude. If Twelve was a star player, I'd be smug. Most certainly smug. If she was the worst player on the team, I'd be supportive of her and gracious to the other parents, but it would sting.
Of all the feminist theory I've read, I can't think of anyone who has addressed, head-on, all the ways in which people are competitive that don't neatly fit into the systems of privilege and oppression. Class privilege is a huge factor, of course, but it's so much more nuanced than that. Who gets playing time and who doesn't, who is on time for the game and who isn't, who carpools with whom, and so on. Maybe the point would be to sort all of the mini status markers into the
basic privilege and oppression categories, or maybe not. Some of these minor points of relative status have to do with social class, some undoubtedly with looks, but I suspect that the human capacity for competition extends beyond our current system of categorizing it. Maybe there
are more systems of privilege and oppression still to be named! It's almost too bad that my dissertation topic is firmly established.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Title Nine Matters, Dammit (and Height Does Not)
Having successfully executed her birthday trip, Twelve and I just sat down to relax in front of the Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium. Twelve likes Jon Stewart; I'm not sure she gets most of the humor and it's one of the few things we almost always say yes to watching, but there aren't many others I'd rather have shaping her political and comical sensibilities, so there it is.
The debate was just fine, though the moderator was terrible and I could have done with much less talking over each other and many fewer references to who's taller than whom.
As a tall person, I find such references tedious, and as a tall person with a small crush on Jon Stewart, I get a little bit defensive when bullies pick on him.
It was Jon's example of "the connection between government action and moving forward" that really got to me. At the Republican National Convention they made a huge deal of the fact that, if American women were a country, they would have placed ninth in the Olympics. I wasn't sure what Jon's point was at first, and I was just realizing where he was going with it when he mentioned Title IV and I burst into tears.
Granted, it's absolutely, wonderfully ironic that the Republicans used this as an example during 'We Built It' night: Had Title IV not been forcibly enacted forty years ago, American women athletes would not have won 58 medals in the 2012 Olympic Games. Period.
Republicans are idiots.
That's not what overwhelmed me in that moment, though. Yes, my emotional girders had been mostly sawn through by the strain of having rather successfully orchestrated a birthday outing that included six seventh graders, two infants, six members of my extended family, three parents of Twelve's friends that I had barely met, one stop at a seventh grade football game, and which culminated at my brother-in-law's family farm of corn mazes, pumpkins, and general awesomeness.
What brought me to tears was the historical significance of Title IV. The legislation that Bernice Sandler, Edith Green, and Patsy Mink made happen in the early 1970s was tremendously, incredibly, amazingly significant to women's access to education and athletics. It's why my mom was able to run track a few years later at a major university and why I ran in the 90s. It's what allowed our 17-year-old friend to kick ass at her state track meet last June. It's why Twelve's lack of athletic ability is due more to her personal disinterest than by lack of opportunity.
Twelve had wandered off by that point in the Rumble, so I called her back in and 'rewound' a bit. She didn't bother to be rude about it, but she didn't get it. She thought it was pretty dumb that Mom was crying about it, but was otherwise unimpressed.
How can you not get this? Oh ... maybe you don't remember that you saw Bernice Sandler speak when you were seven years old.
It's also possible that, when she was seven, Twelve didn't grasp the significance of seeing Bernice Sandler speak. Yes, I took her to see a bunch of awesome people when she was far too young to appreciate any of them, but the bottom line is that Twelve is coming of age in a time when women's participation in sports is taken for granted to an extent that it's never been before.
I know it's not perfect yet: We've still got what's-her-name making news because she's gorgeous and not because she's really good at driving cars supersuperfast. We've still got Hope Solo, whose story would be a lot less compelling - or at least a lot less thoroughly covered by the media - if she wasn't so darn hot. But it's getting better, and particularly if you don't subscribe to ESPN magazine: R and I watched one of the final women's Olympic soccer games with Twelve at our local indoor sports park, I forget which one, and I was struck by the fact that for Twelve, a bunch of youngish men sitting around a bar watching women's soccer was totally normal. The men were taking it perfectly seriously, Twelve and I were the only women there, and I had one of those moments when I realized that it's no wonder that she doesn't quite get it when I talk about feminism.
Would I appreciate it if Twelve showed the slightest interest in any of the things in which I hold graduate degrees? Yeah, that would be nice. I would like her to understand that not all generations of girls have been able to just sign up for a volleyball season through the Boys and Girls Club. I would like her to get that it's a big damn deal that her grandmother ran the 400 meter dash in college in 1970-something. I would like her to be able to articulate the fact that women are able to vote in this country because Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony introduced the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution and that FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER it was finally adopted. I would like her to know that women DIED so that she will have the right to vote in five years.
Holy fucking shit. In five years, Twelve will be old enough to vote.
In two years, we'll be teaching her to drive, and in three, our state will give her a license to drive all by herself. Whether or not her dad follows through on his promise to give her a truck, that's a lot to think about.
Ummm ... I think I need some more tequila.
The debate was just fine, though the moderator was terrible and I could have done with much less talking over each other and many fewer references to who's taller than whom.
As a tall person, I find such references tedious, and as a tall person with a small crush on Jon Stewart, I get a little bit defensive when bullies pick on him.
It was Jon's example of "the connection between government action and moving forward" that really got to me. At the Republican National Convention they made a huge deal of the fact that, if American women were a country, they would have placed ninth in the Olympics. I wasn't sure what Jon's point was at first, and I was just realizing where he was going with it when he mentioned Title IV and I burst into tears.
Granted, it's absolutely, wonderfully ironic that the Republicans used this as an example during 'We Built It' night: Had Title IV not been forcibly enacted forty years ago, American women athletes would not have won 58 medals in the 2012 Olympic Games. Period.
Republicans are idiots.
That's not what overwhelmed me in that moment, though. Yes, my emotional girders had been mostly sawn through by the strain of having rather successfully orchestrated a birthday outing that included six seventh graders, two infants, six members of my extended family, three parents of Twelve's friends that I had barely met, one stop at a seventh grade football game, and which culminated at my brother-in-law's family farm of corn mazes, pumpkins, and general awesomeness.
What brought me to tears was the historical significance of Title IV. The legislation that Bernice Sandler, Edith Green, and Patsy Mink made happen in the early 1970s was tremendously, incredibly, amazingly significant to women's access to education and athletics. It's why my mom was able to run track a few years later at a major university and why I ran in the 90s. It's what allowed our 17-year-old friend to kick ass at her state track meet last June. It's why Twelve's lack of athletic ability is due more to her personal disinterest than by lack of opportunity.
Twelve had wandered off by that point in the Rumble, so I called her back in and 'rewound' a bit. She didn't bother to be rude about it, but she didn't get it. She thought it was pretty dumb that Mom was crying about it, but was otherwise unimpressed.
How can you not get this? Oh ... maybe you don't remember that you saw Bernice Sandler speak when you were seven years old.
It's also possible that, when she was seven, Twelve didn't grasp the significance of seeing Bernice Sandler speak. Yes, I took her to see a bunch of awesome people when she was far too young to appreciate any of them, but the bottom line is that Twelve is coming of age in a time when women's participation in sports is taken for granted to an extent that it's never been before.
I know it's not perfect yet: We've still got what's-her-name making news because she's gorgeous and not because she's really good at driving cars supersuperfast. We've still got Hope Solo, whose story would be a lot less compelling - or at least a lot less thoroughly covered by the media - if she wasn't so darn hot. But it's getting better, and particularly if you don't subscribe to ESPN magazine: R and I watched one of the final women's Olympic soccer games with Twelve at our local indoor sports park, I forget which one, and I was struck by the fact that for Twelve, a bunch of youngish men sitting around a bar watching women's soccer was totally normal. The men were taking it perfectly seriously, Twelve and I were the only women there, and I had one of those moments when I realized that it's no wonder that she doesn't quite get it when I talk about feminism.
Would I appreciate it if Twelve showed the slightest interest in any of the things in which I hold graduate degrees? Yeah, that would be nice. I would like her to understand that not all generations of girls have been able to just sign up for a volleyball season through the Boys and Girls Club. I would like her to get that it's a big damn deal that her grandmother ran the 400 meter dash in college in 1970-something. I would like her to be able to articulate the fact that women are able to vote in this country because Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony introduced the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution and that FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER it was finally adopted. I would like her to know that women DIED so that she will have the right to vote in five years.
Holy fucking shit. In five years, Twelve will be old enough to vote.
In two years, we'll be teaching her to drive, and in three, our state will give her a license to drive all by herself. Whether or not her dad follows through on his promise to give her a truck, that's a lot to think about.
Ummm ... I think I need some more tequila.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Misery, Multivitamins, and Blow-drying Your Face
It's official: I don't want to write about the sad stuff. Two weeks into Twelve's summer visit with her dad, she pretty much stopped calling me to say goodnight.
For the last three or four years, a phone call at bedtime has been our ritual when Twelve's been visiting her dad. With time zone differences and early bedtimes, sometimes I'd miss her call and she'd leave a message. Until least year, the first few nights of each visit she'd call in tears, missing home and mommy. I would comfort her as best I could and eventually tell her that she needs to be brave and go to sleep. Yes, you heard that right; from thousands of miles away, I was doing the actual parenting.
You can imagine how it felt to admonish my eight-year-old to stop crying and go to sleep. I'll sum it up for those of you lacking empathy or imagination: Awful. Also enraging, since after all I had done the first eight years on my own and then, once I got her to the point when she could navigate transcontinental travel on her own, someone else got to just swoop in and enjoy the fruit of my labor? Take credit for it, even!? I'd have said indignantly, "I don't THINK so!" except that it was already happening, was approved and encouraged by a legal system that would have compelled me to participate had I resisted, and will continue to happen indefinitely.
Had I been keeping a diary then, I wouldn't have written about that, either.
I also don't write when I am miserable. It was completely unrelated to Twelve, but I had a couple (okay, four) weeks of being kinda miserable. It may have been depression. It may be that my life is stressful and, when life is stressful, those trying to live it don't tend to function all that well. As I said to my child-and-family-therapist friend, being diagnosed with Depression would validate the way I feel. As she said to me, why does it matter? Life is stressful and stress makes it difficult to function. Why does labeling it Depression make a difference?
Either way, seeing a counselor ('free' with the university fees they make me pay anyway) is on my list of things to do.
Either way, I'm giving myself more freedom to be nonfunctional.
I remember the first and only time I held my mother as she cried. I was seventeen or eighteen; I came into the kitchen and found her on the phone, crying. I had no idea what was going on, but went over and put my arms around her. She had just found out that her mother had been diagnosed with leukemia. Twelve did the same for me the other night when I came home crying. She rocked us back and forth and made comforting noises. (It must be one of those skills that people who were well parented have without knowing they have it - like rocking babies or using scaffolding when reading to preschoolers.) I was crying about something absolutely trivial but the fact that I broke down over it was the telling thing. And Twelve's response was spot on; also telling.
To my eternal gratitude, the missed phone calls didn't foreshadow much of anything; Twelve came home at the end of summer just as she should be. Changed, I'm sure, as must always happen, but still herself in the important ways. A bit more materialistic, which is galling, but still willing to look for and excited about finding a Juicy Couture hoodie for five bucks at a thrift shop.
I've returned, more or less, to my usual equanimity; I'm less prone to choking up and haven't cried all week. I've resolved to not need a capital-D Diagnosis of Depression to be okay with how I feel if I don't feel good.
I'm 'taking better care of myself' via the occasional vitamin, even though I really hate taking vitamins. The B vitamins are supposed to be important to one's mood, and I'm supposed to be taking a multivitamin with calcium anyway so that's something to report at my next check-up.
We've even gone to the gym twice this week before school, Twelve and I together; thank goodness she wants to do this, or it would not be happening. I feel fine about getting an earlier start to my day, but I can't say that euphoria sets in at 7:15 am. Perhaps it's a delayed reaction? We'll see.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: Twelve became Thirteen today. I'm not sure what that does to my diary; I have a few scribbles of entries I still want to write, and she still does impossible things, like coming into the bathroom during my shower with the cheerful announcement that she has to blow-dry her face. Like you going back to re-read that sentence, I was sure I had misheard, so I peeked out to check. Sure enough, she was buzzing her face industriously with the hairdryer. When she finished, I asked what that was all about. "Warming up my face gives me a good complexion: It's like makeup without makeup!"
I had, and continue to have, absolutely no reply to that.
For the last three or four years, a phone call at bedtime has been our ritual when Twelve's been visiting her dad. With time zone differences and early bedtimes, sometimes I'd miss her call and she'd leave a message. Until least year, the first few nights of each visit she'd call in tears, missing home and mommy. I would comfort her as best I could and eventually tell her that she needs to be brave and go to sleep. Yes, you heard that right; from thousands of miles away, I was doing the actual parenting.
You can imagine how it felt to admonish my eight-year-old to stop crying and go to sleep. I'll sum it up for those of you lacking empathy or imagination: Awful. Also enraging, since after all I had done the first eight years on my own and then, once I got her to the point when she could navigate transcontinental travel on her own, someone else got to just swoop in and enjoy the fruit of my labor? Take credit for it, even!? I'd have said indignantly, "I don't THINK so!" except that it was already happening, was approved and encouraged by a legal system that would have compelled me to participate had I resisted, and will continue to happen indefinitely.
Had I been keeping a diary then, I wouldn't have written about that, either.
I also don't write when I am miserable. It was completely unrelated to Twelve, but I had a couple (okay, four) weeks of being kinda miserable. It may have been depression. It may be that my life is stressful and, when life is stressful, those trying to live it don't tend to function all that well. As I said to my child-and-family-therapist friend, being diagnosed with Depression would validate the way I feel. As she said to me, why does it matter? Life is stressful and stress makes it difficult to function. Why does labeling it Depression make a difference?
Either way, seeing a counselor ('free' with the university fees they make me pay anyway) is on my list of things to do.
Either way, I'm giving myself more freedom to be nonfunctional.
I remember the first and only time I held my mother as she cried. I was seventeen or eighteen; I came into the kitchen and found her on the phone, crying. I had no idea what was going on, but went over and put my arms around her. She had just found out that her mother had been diagnosed with leukemia. Twelve did the same for me the other night when I came home crying. She rocked us back and forth and made comforting noises. (It must be one of those skills that people who were well parented have without knowing they have it - like rocking babies or using scaffolding when reading to preschoolers.) I was crying about something absolutely trivial but the fact that I broke down over it was the telling thing. And Twelve's response was spot on; also telling.
To my eternal gratitude, the missed phone calls didn't foreshadow much of anything; Twelve came home at the end of summer just as she should be. Changed, I'm sure, as must always happen, but still herself in the important ways. A bit more materialistic, which is galling, but still willing to look for and excited about finding a Juicy Couture hoodie for five bucks at a thrift shop.
I've returned, more or less, to my usual equanimity; I'm less prone to choking up and haven't cried all week. I've resolved to not need a capital-D Diagnosis of Depression to be okay with how I feel if I don't feel good.
I'm 'taking better care of myself' via the occasional vitamin, even though I really hate taking vitamins. The B vitamins are supposed to be important to one's mood, and I'm supposed to be taking a multivitamin with calcium anyway so that's something to report at my next check-up.
We've even gone to the gym twice this week before school, Twelve and I together; thank goodness she wants to do this, or it would not be happening. I feel fine about getting an earlier start to my day, but I can't say that euphoria sets in at 7:15 am. Perhaps it's a delayed reaction? We'll see.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: Twelve became Thirteen today. I'm not sure what that does to my diary; I have a few scribbles of entries I still want to write, and she still does impossible things, like coming into the bathroom during my shower with the cheerful announcement that she has to blow-dry her face. Like you going back to re-read that sentence, I was sure I had misheard, so I peeked out to check. Sure enough, she was buzzing her face industriously with the hairdryer. When she finished, I asked what that was all about. "Warming up my face gives me a good complexion: It's like makeup without makeup!"
I had, and continue to have, absolutely no reply to that.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Deep Thoughts
I've developed a possibly irritating tendency to ask people what they remember about their adolescent experiences in hopes of developing some idea of how to effectively parent my own adolescent.
(If you've stopped returning my calls, I understand.)
Last night, driving home with two exceptionally smart women, the question somehow led to the subject of the moments when we first realized that we were smarter then most other people. For B, it happened in adolescence during a social studies group project. She wondered why the other kids were wasting so much time and doing so many stupid and pointless things, until it dawned on her that their brains simply weren't working the same way hers did.
E had to think about it a bit, but told us about her first major interaction with a teacher who was just flat-out wrong. She tried to correct the teacher, and we all know how well authority figures take being told they're wrong.
I remember pointing out to my folks that the direction they had drawn the bathroom door opening and the location of the mirror meant that anyone sitting on the west side of the dining room table would have a direct view of anyone sitting on the toilet if the door was inadvertently opened. I noticed some impracticality about the way the stairs came down into the garage, too - the cars were going to get in the way of the doorway, or something.
What do you mean, your parents didn't design and build a house around you when you were a kid? How did you climb up into the rafters of your house if the the drywall was already up?
One thing I remember about my childhood is spending lots of time thinking and figuring things out for myself. I remember thinking about ways to weave hair together, and trying it out and realizing that I was braiding. I can tell you where I was sitting and what doll's hair it was, too. Ditto with loops of yarn that turned out to be crocheting: I was sitting on the left end of the couch and the yarn was red. I remember how smart I felt when I figured out that the freeway exit numbers correspond to the mileposts and that a solid yellow line means do not pass.
Twelve spends a lot of time on her own, but what if she doesn't think about things?
Okay, okay, I heard it. She probably thinks about something, even if it's just how cute Niall is and how Harry is her favorite.
I also wonder if Twelve is ever going to experience the kind of existential clouds that pretty much all of the adults I know live under. What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want out of life? Am I making a difference in the world? Am I really happy? Twelve doesn't seem to be asking any of these questions, and as we discussed last night, it's the interesting people who do.
B added that adolescence was when she developed a critical perspective on life. She read The Beauty Myth and realized that her bodily self-hatred wasn't coming from her, but from the media, and began to fight back. I didn't discover feminism until adulthood, but I was completely miserable in middle school, so complacency was never an option for me either. I worry that Twelve will be complacent. She's popular, attractive, tall, privileged, and verbose, so she doesn't have much to fight against. The world works for Twelve. I almost wish someone would tell her that she can't do something because she's a girl - then she'd have something to get riled up about.
What if Twelve just grows up and gets a job that she likes, keeps it until she retires, and that works for her? I don't understand people like this. I hear they exist, but I have no category for uncomplicated contentment. I cannot fathom doing the same job for several decades - or even for several years, to be perfectly honest. I am too busy getting bored and asking those damn unanswerable questions.
As we concluded in the car last night, it would be okay if Twelve does just grow up and choose a career. I don't have to understand her - ever. Hell, she can take care of me in my old age, since clearly I am not contributing the maximum amount to a 401(k) at the moment.
Popular, confident, content ... it's a good thing she looks like me.
(If you've stopped returning my calls, I understand.)
Last night, driving home with two exceptionally smart women, the question somehow led to the subject of the moments when we first realized that we were smarter then most other people. For B, it happened in adolescence during a social studies group project. She wondered why the other kids were wasting so much time and doing so many stupid and pointless things, until it dawned on her that their brains simply weren't working the same way hers did.
E had to think about it a bit, but told us about her first major interaction with a teacher who was just flat-out wrong. She tried to correct the teacher, and we all know how well authority figures take being told they're wrong.
I remember pointing out to my folks that the direction they had drawn the bathroom door opening and the location of the mirror meant that anyone sitting on the west side of the dining room table would have a direct view of anyone sitting on the toilet if the door was inadvertently opened. I noticed some impracticality about the way the stairs came down into the garage, too - the cars were going to get in the way of the doorway, or something.
What do you mean, your parents didn't design and build a house around you when you were a kid? How did you climb up into the rafters of your house if the the drywall was already up?
One thing I remember about my childhood is spending lots of time thinking and figuring things out for myself. I remember thinking about ways to weave hair together, and trying it out and realizing that I was braiding. I can tell you where I was sitting and what doll's hair it was, too. Ditto with loops of yarn that turned out to be crocheting: I was sitting on the left end of the couch and the yarn was red. I remember how smart I felt when I figured out that the freeway exit numbers correspond to the mileposts and that a solid yellow line means do not pass.
Twelve spends a lot of time on her own, but what if she doesn't think about things?
Okay, okay, I heard it. She probably thinks about something, even if it's just how cute Niall is and how Harry is her favorite.
I also wonder if Twelve is ever going to experience the kind of existential clouds that pretty much all of the adults I know live under. What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want out of life? Am I making a difference in the world? Am I really happy? Twelve doesn't seem to be asking any of these questions, and as we discussed last night, it's the interesting people who do.
B added that adolescence was when she developed a critical perspective on life. She read The Beauty Myth and realized that her bodily self-hatred wasn't coming from her, but from the media, and began to fight back. I didn't discover feminism until adulthood, but I was completely miserable in middle school, so complacency was never an option for me either. I worry that Twelve will be complacent. She's popular, attractive, tall, privileged, and verbose, so she doesn't have much to fight against. The world works for Twelve. I almost wish someone would tell her that she can't do something because she's a girl - then she'd have something to get riled up about.
What if Twelve just grows up and gets a job that she likes, keeps it until she retires, and that works for her? I don't understand people like this. I hear they exist, but I have no category for uncomplicated contentment. I cannot fathom doing the same job for several decades - or even for several years, to be perfectly honest. I am too busy getting bored and asking those damn unanswerable questions.
As we concluded in the car last night, it would be okay if Twelve does just grow up and choose a career. I don't have to understand her - ever. Hell, she can take care of me in my old age, since clearly I am not contributing the maximum amount to a 401(k) at the moment.
Popular, confident, content ... it's a good thing she looks like me.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Interstitial Parenting, Part Four: Teaching the Grays
I recently learned that two young adult men that I know - a cousin and a longtime family friend - have done the same faith-based residential rehab program. The cousin just entered, according to a recent email asking for prayer. The friend, according to another email, is getting married after over a decade of trying to get his life on track via the same program. I don't know all the details of either situation, but both lost control of their lives to alcohol and drugs.
Both of these young men were raised in politically conservative, fundamentally religious 'intact' families in which the father is the head and the mother does the reproductive labor. Both families reject alcohol completely. Both families, I'm sure, reject extramarital sex, same-sex marriage, comprehensive sex education, and abortion.
It must be so easy to raise a child from a conservative/fundamentalist perspective! Clear, concise answers exist, and you don't even have to think about them, much less come up with them on your own: Alcohol is a tool of the devil, so don't drink it. Sex is bad until you're married. You can only get married if you're heterosexual. Children should not learn about contraception because that will make them have sex. Abortion should be illegal because it kills people who aren't born yet.
However.
Raising a child to see things in black and white does her a grave disservice as she becomes an adult. If you're raised with the mindset that everything is black and white, it must be incredibly difficult to deal with the inevitable grays of the real world. What happens when an aunt (let's say) reveals that she's going to spend the rest of her life with her female 'roommate'? What happens when a cousin ends up pregnant by the wrong guy at the wrong time? What happens when you discover that tequila is delicious and that having a few drinks lowers your inhibitions in a good way?
Moral absolutes don't help you navigate the inevitable ambiguities of life - they prevent you from doing so. You have to disown your lesbian aunts. Your cousin has to have a child she doesn't want and can't support. You can't have any more tequila and by golly don't have any fun with friends.
Twelve is exposed to lots and lots and lots of grays: In conversation, in the explanations she's given (there's lots of 'on the other hand'), in the way we make decisions (clothing production is evil, but we wear mass-produced clothes anyway, ditto for conventionally produced food), in the way household rules are made (we acknowledge adult/child power differences, but we make her do things anyway), and in the very topics R and I are expert in (critical perspectives on ecology and gender demand an articulation of ambiguities).
Twelve's conversational diet is (sometimes comically) varied and from multiple perspectives. On a recent camping trip with friends visiting from Columbia and Israel, topics of conversation ranged from torture methods used throughout history to the best method of cooking biscuit dough on a stick over a campfire to how to estimate the heights of trees. Granted, Twelve doesn't participate in every conversation and granted, the easiest way to estimate the height of a tree is to point R's laser range-finding binoculars at the top, but the point is that complex conversation and ambiguity swirls around Twelve all the time. Any statement is fair game for challenge or critique. In our household, it is nearly impossible to get away with making an unchallenged statement of position, fact, or even preference. You think abortion should be illegal? Okay, but you're going to need to explain yourself.
Conversations with Twelve are also characterized by the exploration of multiple perspectives. Yes, R and I do have moral stances and yes, we express them to Twelve, but she is also quite aware that there are other acceptable points of view. She also knows that many of our behaviors - particularly around food and clothing - are fraught with contradictions. She's getting fairly adept at pointing them out, too. "Why won't you buy the [item she wants]? You bought [item I've previously purchased]!" Because there are gray areas, sweetie.
I will admit that I occasionally use the 'Because I'm your mom and I said so' line with Twelve occasionally. And then we look at each other and roll our eyes, because I know Twelve's too smart to fall for that and Twelve knows she's too smart to fall for that. She demands logic, but - so far - when I acknowledge that I'm simply pulling the 'mom' card, she goes along with whatever it is that I'm expecting or vetoing. So far.
I figure that since adulthood is all about complying with the occasional pile of unnecessary-seeming administrative bullshit, it's not a bad thing for Twelve to be able to deal with that. Sometimes parents are irrational and sometimes the people who are in control are wrong. When her fifth-grade teacher told the class that sharp-shinned hawks hang out alongside highways and red-tailed hawks live in the forests, Twelve experienced this first-hand. Sharp-shins, you see, do not hang out alongside highways. They live in the forests. Those big birds that you see on power poles and fence posts along the freeway? You guessed it, red-tails. Twelve knows this, living with an ornithologist as she does, and from my excited identifications of red-tails on our travels. (In six years with R, I've managed to learn a dozen birds or so, and I get a real kick out of seeing the ones I know. Yes, it's annoying, but I don't care. Sorry.)
She didn't press the issue at the time, but we sure had a good chuckle about it at home, and it was an excellent lesson in knowing when there's absolutely no point in pressing the issue with incorrect authority figures.
I think (smugly) that Twelve's well on her way to being an incredibly annoying college student.
Both of these young men were raised in politically conservative, fundamentally religious 'intact' families in which the father is the head and the mother does the reproductive labor. Both families reject alcohol completely. Both families, I'm sure, reject extramarital sex, same-sex marriage, comprehensive sex education, and abortion.
It must be so easy to raise a child from a conservative/fundamentalist perspective! Clear, concise answers exist, and you don't even have to think about them, much less come up with them on your own: Alcohol is a tool of the devil, so don't drink it. Sex is bad until you're married. You can only get married if you're heterosexual. Children should not learn about contraception because that will make them have sex. Abortion should be illegal because it kills people who aren't born yet.
However.
Raising a child to see things in black and white does her a grave disservice as she becomes an adult. If you're raised with the mindset that everything is black and white, it must be incredibly difficult to deal with the inevitable grays of the real world. What happens when an aunt (let's say) reveals that she's going to spend the rest of her life with her female 'roommate'? What happens when a cousin ends up pregnant by the wrong guy at the wrong time? What happens when you discover that tequila is delicious and that having a few drinks lowers your inhibitions in a good way?
Moral absolutes don't help you navigate the inevitable ambiguities of life - they prevent you from doing so. You have to disown your lesbian aunts. Your cousin has to have a child she doesn't want and can't support. You can't have any more tequila and by golly don't have any fun with friends.
Twelve is exposed to lots and lots and lots of grays: In conversation, in the explanations she's given (there's lots of 'on the other hand'), in the way we make decisions (clothing production is evil, but we wear mass-produced clothes anyway, ditto for conventionally produced food), in the way household rules are made (we acknowledge adult/child power differences, but we make her do things anyway), and in the very topics R and I are expert in (critical perspectives on ecology and gender demand an articulation of ambiguities).
Twelve's conversational diet is (sometimes comically) varied and from multiple perspectives. On a recent camping trip with friends visiting from Columbia and Israel, topics of conversation ranged from torture methods used throughout history to the best method of cooking biscuit dough on a stick over a campfire to how to estimate the heights of trees. Granted, Twelve doesn't participate in every conversation and granted, the easiest way to estimate the height of a tree is to point R's laser range-finding binoculars at the top, but the point is that complex conversation and ambiguity swirls around Twelve all the time. Any statement is fair game for challenge or critique. In our household, it is nearly impossible to get away with making an unchallenged statement of position, fact, or even preference. You think abortion should be illegal? Okay, but you're going to need to explain yourself.
Conversations with Twelve are also characterized by the exploration of multiple perspectives. Yes, R and I do have moral stances and yes, we express them to Twelve, but she is also quite aware that there are other acceptable points of view. She also knows that many of our behaviors - particularly around food and clothing - are fraught with contradictions. She's getting fairly adept at pointing them out, too. "Why won't you buy the [item she wants]? You bought [item I've previously purchased]!" Because there are gray areas, sweetie.
I will admit that I occasionally use the 'Because I'm your mom and I said so' line with Twelve occasionally. And then we look at each other and roll our eyes, because I know Twelve's too smart to fall for that and Twelve knows she's too smart to fall for that. She demands logic, but - so far - when I acknowledge that I'm simply pulling the 'mom' card, she goes along with whatever it is that I'm expecting or vetoing. So far.
I figure that since adulthood is all about complying with the occasional pile of unnecessary-seeming administrative bullshit, it's not a bad thing for Twelve to be able to deal with that. Sometimes parents are irrational and sometimes the people who are in control are wrong. When her fifth-grade teacher told the class that sharp-shinned hawks hang out alongside highways and red-tailed hawks live in the forests, Twelve experienced this first-hand. Sharp-shins, you see, do not hang out alongside highways. They live in the forests. Those big birds that you see on power poles and fence posts along the freeway? You guessed it, red-tails. Twelve knows this, living with an ornithologist as she does, and from my excited identifications of red-tails on our travels. (In six years with R, I've managed to learn a dozen birds or so, and I get a real kick out of seeing the ones I know. Yes, it's annoying, but I don't care. Sorry.)
She didn't press the issue at the time, but we sure had a good chuckle about it at home, and it was an excellent lesson in knowing when there's absolutely no point in pressing the issue with incorrect authority figures.
I think (smugly) that Twelve's well on her way to being an incredibly annoying college student.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Congratulations, You've Won Olympic Gold in the Douchebaggery All-Around!
Do you ever have one of those days where you want to sit down and write, but you are too busy talking to your lawyer and wondering if you'll really have to put your baby on an airplane the next morning?
Welcome to my yesterday.
The short version is that my ex is winning yet another gold medal in douchebaggery, and somehow it hasn't been four years since the last one. Last Thursday morning, the unexpected knock at the door was a guy who handed me yet another batch of legal paperwork. Motion for enforcement of parenting time, or something. He wants six weeks of make-up parenting time (when is this going to happen, pray tell? Have you lengthened summer? You certainly have a sufficient god complex to believe you can!), for me to pay for the make-up parenting time, six weeks each summer in the future, and for me to pay for his legal costs.
I had kept my word and didn't send Twelve for that six-week trip that my ex booked months ago, while reiterating that I would be happy to work with him to arrange for one or both three-week trips. (Bizarre side note: I got a text message from him the day that the six-week flight left, asking if I had or had not put her on the plane. Apparently, he seriously thought that I was going to do what he told me to do after all and not tell him about it.)
I hadn't heard back from him about a three-week visit, and summer is practically over, so I emailed him a couple of weeks ago at Twelve's request, asking if a summer visit could still happen. In response, I got an unrelated question about Twelve's scheduled November and December visits: She has a whole week off for Thanksgiving this year, and R and I are going to Mexico at the end of December for a friend's wedding. Twelve's dad technically gets Wednesday-Sunday over Thanksgiving, and it hasn't yet made sense for her to fly 3000 miles for that length of time. I had hypothesized to Twelve that she might be able to come to Mexico with us if we could work everything out with her dad. My ex wanted to know if I would be okay with him having the whole week at Thanksgiving, and was just checking in about December to make sure that we weren't planning to infringe on his time to take Twelve to Mexico. (No, he didn't say, "What an amazing opportunity for Twelve to visit another country and get to go to the wedding of people she cares about!" That would be the normal, non-asshat/good parent reaction.)
You've threatened to take me to court and now you want me to be nice and give you a whole week at Thanksgiving? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Promise you won't take me to court, and we can talk.
I said it much more politely, of course, and a couple of days later the court papers arrived. Okay then, you want to do it the stupidly expensive way? Game on.
I called in my attorney for a strategy session, and said let's make him feel like he's really getting something here. Let's tell him he can have all the things I would have given him anyway - a visit yet this summer, a whole week at Thanksgiving, and two weeks at Christmas. Also, while we're at it (at hundreds per hour), let's build in some restrictions: Six weeks the summer after next only if he actually exercises all the time he's entitled to between now and then and calls Twelve once a week. Let's clear up some financial loose ends from the last go-round, just to make me feel better about those hundreds: Unaccompanied minor fees are part of the flight costs, and you DO have to pay them (remember, I know how much you make, you stingy asshole).
It worked.
We did have a slight difference of expectation about what it means to fit in a trip before school starts. I was thinking next week sometime. He was thinking tomorrow. So, at five o'clock last night, I got final confirmation from my attorney that he agreed to the settlement and that a flight was booked for 10 o'clock this morning.
Twelve, true to form and to the way I've raised her, was gung-ho at noon yesterday about the idea of leaving home at seven this morning. (Gratuitous side note: Damn, I'm good!)
After she boarded, I was sitting there tearily, waiting for the plane to leave, wishing that there was a half-used tissue in one of my four pockets (I am my grandmother's granddaughter, and this is how we roll. In another decade, the half-used tissue will be up my sleeve), and pathetically composed a text message to my sister, R, and a friend.
There's an attentive father hanging out with his three boys near me. Thanks, Universe, for reminding me what Twelve's never had.
Checked in with Twelve - window seat, apparently decent seating companion, characteristically uninterested in talking to me.
I dripped a tiny bit more, just decompressing. "At least she's blessed with a great mom!" from my sister. "He's only attentive so his kids don't melt down because he wants to pick up airport babes" from R.
I'm pretty much out of emotions at this point and am ready to move on. The fact that the kids got out of hand three seconds later and got quite a semi-manipulative lecture from their dad helped, too.
Welcome to my yesterday.
The short version is that my ex is winning yet another gold medal in douchebaggery, and somehow it hasn't been four years since the last one. Last Thursday morning, the unexpected knock at the door was a guy who handed me yet another batch of legal paperwork. Motion for enforcement of parenting time, or something. He wants six weeks of make-up parenting time (when is this going to happen, pray tell? Have you lengthened summer? You certainly have a sufficient god complex to believe you can!), for me to pay for the make-up parenting time, six weeks each summer in the future, and for me to pay for his legal costs.
I had kept my word and didn't send Twelve for that six-week trip that my ex booked months ago, while reiterating that I would be happy to work with him to arrange for one or both three-week trips. (Bizarre side note: I got a text message from him the day that the six-week flight left, asking if I had or had not put her on the plane. Apparently, he seriously thought that I was going to do what he told me to do after all and not tell him about it.)
I hadn't heard back from him about a three-week visit, and summer is practically over, so I emailed him a couple of weeks ago at Twelve's request, asking if a summer visit could still happen. In response, I got an unrelated question about Twelve's scheduled November and December visits: She has a whole week off for Thanksgiving this year, and R and I are going to Mexico at the end of December for a friend's wedding. Twelve's dad technically gets Wednesday-Sunday over Thanksgiving, and it hasn't yet made sense for her to fly 3000 miles for that length of time. I had hypothesized to Twelve that she might be able to come to Mexico with us if we could work everything out with her dad. My ex wanted to know if I would be okay with him having the whole week at Thanksgiving, and was just checking in about December to make sure that we weren't planning to infringe on his time to take Twelve to Mexico. (No, he didn't say, "What an amazing opportunity for Twelve to visit another country and get to go to the wedding of people she cares about!" That would be the normal, non-asshat/good parent reaction.)
You've threatened to take me to court and now you want me to be nice and give you a whole week at Thanksgiving? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Promise you won't take me to court, and we can talk.
I said it much more politely, of course, and a couple of days later the court papers arrived. Okay then, you want to do it the stupidly expensive way? Game on.
I called in my attorney for a strategy session, and said let's make him feel like he's really getting something here. Let's tell him he can have all the things I would have given him anyway - a visit yet this summer, a whole week at Thanksgiving, and two weeks at Christmas. Also, while we're at it (at hundreds per hour), let's build in some restrictions: Six weeks the summer after next only if he actually exercises all the time he's entitled to between now and then and calls Twelve once a week. Let's clear up some financial loose ends from the last go-round, just to make me feel better about those hundreds: Unaccompanied minor fees are part of the flight costs, and you DO have to pay them (remember, I know how much you make, you stingy asshole).
It worked.
We did have a slight difference of expectation about what it means to fit in a trip before school starts. I was thinking next week sometime. He was thinking tomorrow. So, at five o'clock last night, I got final confirmation from my attorney that he agreed to the settlement and that a flight was booked for 10 o'clock this morning.
Twelve, true to form and to the way I've raised her, was gung-ho at noon yesterday about the idea of leaving home at seven this morning. (Gratuitous side note: Damn, I'm good!)
After she boarded, I was sitting there tearily, waiting for the plane to leave, wishing that there was a half-used tissue in one of my four pockets (I am my grandmother's granddaughter, and this is how we roll. In another decade, the half-used tissue will be up my sleeve), and pathetically composed a text message to my sister, R, and a friend.
There's an attentive father hanging out with his three boys near me. Thanks, Universe, for reminding me what Twelve's never had.
Checked in with Twelve - window seat, apparently decent seating companion, characteristically uninterested in talking to me.
I dripped a tiny bit more, just decompressing. "At least she's blessed with a great mom!" from my sister. "He's only attentive so his kids don't melt down because he wants to pick up airport babes" from R.
I'm pretty much out of emotions at this point and am ready to move on. The fact that the kids got out of hand three seconds later and got quite a semi-manipulative lecture from their dad helped, too.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Guilt Trip Down Memory Lane [or] Interstitial Parenting, Part Three
I was interviewed the other day about my involvement in advocacy on behalf of college students who are also parenting. Apparently a story is being written about the six+ years I've been a part of a group that does things to help remove barriers to student parents' access to the full University experience. We've done some awesome things; I'm very honored to have been a part of it all.
The interviewer asked me about the conflict between the demands of parenting and the demands of being a student, which got me thinking: I've been stressed out for most of Twelve's life. Between the stress of being a college student and the stress of being an underemployed college graduate, there were maybe a couple of years of regular life - total.
This makes me sad.
On the one hand, it's good for children to learn that parents have other important priorities in their lives and that we do not always practice perfect parenting.
On the other hand, it's lousy to be reminded of all the times that you haven't been the parent you want to be.
Thanks a lot for the guilt trip, interviewing story-writing dude! (He is actually a great guy - his daughter just graduated from Twelve's school and we got to chat a bit about that.)
As I've made decisions in the last several months to work less and be home with/for Twelve more, I've really been conscious of the effect that stress has on our interactions since she's become an adolescent. When I've been worried about money or trying to get a paper written or studying for an exam, I just didn't have as much emotional energy left for her. When she senses that I'm stressed out, I think it affects her behavior now in a way that it didn't in the past. I can't quite put my finger on the difference, but it's almost like she's getting defensive and fighting back, or something.
Structuring my life so that I can be home a lot this summer and after school next year just feels right. It means that I will be able to respond to whatever parts of Twelve's life that she wants to share with me (according to my research, these will become fewer and fewer from here on out). I'll have time to supervise school performance more closely (sigh). I may even postpone the pursuit of a tenure-track professorship - assuming that's even what I want - until after high school (gulp).
All of this is absolutely an exercise of privilege, of course, and I'm intentionally as conscious as I can be of the way luck, systematic privilege, and my life skills and choices have worked together to make this possible at this time. I'm looking at it in the same way that I did the decision to send her to Waldorf kindergarten: I'm not going to not do it because it's something that's unavailable to so many others. I'm going to do the best that I can for my daughter, period. Hypocritical? Maybe. Pragmatic? Yeah. Welcome to the space between the principle and the reality.
Also, this sets back my plan to buy a new(er) car by at least six years, so if you want to be a sanctimonious pedant, go do it somewhere else.
The interviewer asked me about the conflict between the demands of parenting and the demands of being a student, which got me thinking: I've been stressed out for most of Twelve's life. Between the stress of being a college student and the stress of being an underemployed college graduate, there were maybe a couple of years of regular life - total.
This makes me sad.
On the one hand, it's good for children to learn that parents have other important priorities in their lives and that we do not always practice perfect parenting.
On the other hand, it's lousy to be reminded of all the times that you haven't been the parent you want to be.
Thanks a lot for the guilt trip, interviewing story-writing dude! (He is actually a great guy - his daughter just graduated from Twelve's school and we got to chat a bit about that.)
As I've made decisions in the last several months to work less and be home with/for Twelve more, I've really been conscious of the effect that stress has on our interactions since she's become an adolescent. When I've been worried about money or trying to get a paper written or studying for an exam, I just didn't have as much emotional energy left for her. When she senses that I'm stressed out, I think it affects her behavior now in a way that it didn't in the past. I can't quite put my finger on the difference, but it's almost like she's getting defensive and fighting back, or something.
Structuring my life so that I can be home a lot this summer and after school next year just feels right. It means that I will be able to respond to whatever parts of Twelve's life that she wants to share with me (according to my research, these will become fewer and fewer from here on out). I'll have time to supervise school performance more closely (sigh). I may even postpone the pursuit of a tenure-track professorship - assuming that's even what I want - until after high school (gulp).
All of this is absolutely an exercise of privilege, of course, and I'm intentionally as conscious as I can be of the way luck, systematic privilege, and my life skills and choices have worked together to make this possible at this time. I'm looking at it in the same way that I did the decision to send her to Waldorf kindergarten: I'm not going to not do it because it's something that's unavailable to so many others. I'm going to do the best that I can for my daughter, period. Hypocritical? Maybe. Pragmatic? Yeah. Welcome to the space between the principle and the reality.
Also, this sets back my plan to buy a new(er) car by at least six years, so if you want to be a sanctimonious pedant, go do it somewhere else.
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