Parenting Styles, Part 3 of 3.
Oops, Your Life Experiences are Showing!
A few days ago I was at an outdoor birthday party in a park with Eli. We tried swinging and sand castles at the playground, but all he really wanted to do was dig in the gravel around the picnic tables. Hmmm. It was just garden-type dirt and I had wet-wipes in my bag plus OxyClean detergent at home. So I turned Eli loose, staying beside him to make sure he didn’t put grubby choking hazards into his mouth. When he suddenly rubbed his nose, his face became as grungy as his hands. I laughed and grabbed my camera. One of my friends cheered, “Oh, that’s great! I love seeing a happy, dirty baby!” But then another mom walked by and said, “Goodness! Aren’t you going to get him out of there?” I felt abashed and judged for a quick moment. Then I thought, “Nope. I thought it through and this is fine with me.”
As I watched Eli play, I realized it was more than fine with me. I wanted him to experience nature firsthand, having adventures while not worrying about a little dirt. My father was a research scientist who worked in marine settings, so most of the summers of my childhood were spent wandering sparsely-inhabited islands, climbing huge live oak trees, building forts in thickets, and standing in the middle of salt marshes with my dad. (I oh-so-proudly served as scribe because his hands were too muddy to handle his research notebook.)
Those summers gave me plenty of time and space for thinking and daydreaming. I learned to enjoy my own company and I fell in love with writing as a way to express and record thoughts, feelings, and discoveries. Because I don’t mind doing things on my own and because my writing gives me something absorbing to do with my brain, I am happy being a stay-at-home mom. Knowing that, I look at Eli and wonder how I can give him a childhood setting with enough breathing room that he can listen to himself, discovering who he is deep down and what will bring him joy. Yup -- even if I wasn’t consciously thinking about all that background information at the park, my hopes and dreams for my son guided how I handled the situation.
When we got home, Eli was soon pink again thanks to a sudsy bath. As the house settled into the quiet evening hours, I got to thinking about a family I met when I worked at a daycare during my college years. Cherie was a four year-old with big brown eyes and gorgeous curls. She liked to swing and play with dolls, but she never touched the sandbox because her mother brought her to daycare dressed up each day. While the other kids scraped sticks in the dirt or shimmied under the slide to find a shady spot to build fairy houses, Cherie stood on the sidelines in that day’s perfectly clean sundress. Poor kid!
Soon the staff asked Cherie’s mom if she would bring her child wearing play clothes instead. Nope. Didn’t happen. Then I took the mom aside and told her what I’d seen – Cherie left out and bored day after day. The mom looked stricken and with a gush explained that her parents used to be well off but lost their money when she was a girl. The remainder of her childhood was spent trying to save face in front of friends who had far more resources; clean and tidy was all the respectability they could manage. As a mom, she had a hard time letting go of making sure Cherie never knew what it was like to have people look down on her with pity. Gulp. That wasn’t what I was expecting, but it made sense. (We struck a bargain with Cherie’s mom. Most of the parents came into the daycare in the morning and afternoon. Would she bring some play clothes that we could put Cherie in during the middle of the day when mostly just the kids and staff would see her? Worked like a charm.)
Two moms. Two very different approaches. Both women wanting good things for their children. Our experiences mold us as parents. Our fears do too. And, of course, our values show through the decisions we make.
As I talked with my parent friends about parenting styles, it became even clearer to me why we can be so passionate about parenting issues or trying to give our children advantages or even the way others interact with our children. First and foremost, we love our children so much. Although I polished the language a little, recently a mom explained her feelings for her child in no uncertain terms. “You know how I feel about somebody babysitting my daughter? It’s like this: ‘Here. Here is my lung. Take care of it well while I am gone because if you wound it, I will never breathe as easy again. And if it ceases to function altogether, I will die.’”
As for me, if another mom lets her child shove Eli aside in the sandbox or scolds him harshly when he picks up her kid’s sippy cup, I may understand on one level that these types of interactions are part of life. But on another level, I have to quickly remind myself to act as a calm human mama rather than a grizzly bear mama. Be mean to my still-achingly-innocent kid and I’m tempted to roar while I swat off your face with my claws. Hopefully, that will get a wee bit easier as Eli gets older, is less tender and baffled about the world. But those protective mama feelings aren’t going to stop. This is the same root of my frustration and embarrassment if Eli has a meltdown in public or around extended family I don’t know well. I see his wonderful side every day and love him so much. Although hardly realistic, I want others to appreciate and love Eli too, for him to be welcomed and wanted wherever he goes.
Aside from simply the love that we feel, the strong connection we have with our children is another factor in how much passion can lie beneath our parenting style. I remember looking down at newborn Eli in my arms and thinking that there wasn’t a cell in his body that hadn’t come through my body first. He is a separate person with a separate soul, yet it stunned me how connected I felt to him -- a heady concoction of love, duty, joy, and wonder.
Our connection to our children also connects them to our past. As we grow up, the rights and wrongs of our own lives often sink into backstory -- until we have children. I talked to a mom who suddenly felt at odds with her own mother soon after childbirth because she now looked back at childhood through the lens of love she had for her own daughter. How could her mother have made some of those choices? On the other hand, I now see how carefully my mom worked through issues left from her own childhood to make sure my brother and I had a better life. I wish so much that I could thank her but also show her the fruits of her work appearing as love poured out from her children to her grandchildren. Still another example is a friend’s husband who has showered his son with six (count ‘em...six!) tricycles. She surmised it was because he remembered loving his first tricycle so much that he wanted to share that with his child.
For better or worse, we remember how we felt as children – what we loved, what we feared, what confused us.... Whether we mean to or not, to some degree we pile our experiences, dreams, and failures around our baby’s cradle because that wee one feels like such a part of us.
Because of the depth of our love and caring, because our parenting truly matters, and because parenting takes place absolutely everywhere and all the time regardless of who is around to watch, we become vulnerable in a whole new way when we become parents. The way I see it, the only way to not just survive parenthood, but to thrive and serve our children well is by truly knowing ourselves. That way we can dismantle the negatives and build up the positives within us. The more successful we are at this lifelong task, the less we are caught in webs of the past – and the less we bind up our children. We then stand a much better chance of being able to interact with our children (and their playmates, teachers, coaches, etc.) with love, kindness, and thoughtfulness.
It seems to me that there are probably as many ways to “work on your stuff” as there are people. My mom regularly attended a Bible study filled with a lot of moms she admired, finding a dual path of spirituality and camaraderie. Me too. Yet mine is spread across more sources. I (obviously!) write my way through a lot of issues and ideas. I’m a big reader as well, haunting book stores and libraries for answers. And there’s nothing like a good conversation with one of those wonderfully honest longtime friends for helping you figure things out. There’s another source of help too. Almost two decades ago, when my parents died, I had a lot of grief to work through and found the Natural Spirituality Group at my local Episcopal church was invaluable. One of the aspects we explored was mindfulness. Years later, a friend here in California mentioned there are local groups focusing on mindful parenting. I've participated in a couple and find them very, very helpful.
The examples I used above make it seem like I've "got it all together," but of course not. (No parent does.) I definitely have my shortcomings and struggles even if I was lucky enough to be born into a functional family and have a happy childhood. I've got a long way to go and a lot of challenges ahead in parenting, but I feel like I have the right tools and provisions in my journey bag. Wish me luck! This little guy deserves my best.
"The fiercely protective love I feel for my children has propelled me to do the inner work we call mindful parenting. This inner work has yielded unexpected gifts and pleasures. It has helped me to see my children more clearly, as they are, without the veils of my own fears, expectations, and needs, and to see what is truly called for in each moment." --Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. Hyperion Books, 1997. Pg. 7.
Click here for part 1 of 3.
Click here for part 2 of 3.
