Without Reservations

Pretty sure I’ve said this before on here, but being a parent is hard.  You either have to be a naturally good and wise person (I’m not) or you have to work like hell to become a more self-realized adult to prevent your own crap from bleeding over into your children.  I’m working on option two. 

I mean, I know there are people who really don’t care too much.  They pop out kids without really thinking about much above what the monogram is going to look like on the Christmas sweater.  And they seem fine.  Their kids seem fine.  And they float through life living pretty much the life their parents lived, but with more technology.  I’m not sure how that works because I’m seeing it from the outside (and simplifying it a ton.)  From the outside, I just don’t see how this happens.  Don’t they question?

And I guess that’s it.  I lead an examined life.  And by “examined” I mean, full of doubt and learning and change.  It’s uncomfortable.  I question religion.  I question family ties.  I question what I read and hear.  I question my own thought processes and inspirations.  I question the love I receive and the love I give.  I question my place in this world and my contributions to others.  I question everything.  It’s exhausting.  No wonder I look so old.

I like that I don’t take the status quo and run, but this way of looking at the world also breeds a kind of bone-deep sadness that I don’t want to pass on to my children.  I want a few pieces of absolute joy to shine through – find them where they will – otherwise they work too hard for too little happiness.  Jack finds his joy in his coding world right now and I worry that he will someday find that he is not the best programmer in the world and that “just” being ONE of the best coders in the world won’t be enough.  See how ridiculous I am?  And Lila, emotionally intelligent and logical and indomitable, sees too much of the pettiness of others.  She watches like a hawk.  And thinks that’s the way it is and the way it always will be. 

In a way, I think I want ignorance for my children.  Which is so bad.  Or is it?!  Part of me wishes I had those children who are a little dumb and don’t see the nuances of this world, don’t see what can’t be unseen.  Jack has a little of that, in that he doesn’t always get that people are being intentionally horrible to him.  What a gift!  And my children are given the gift of having come from a privileged background.  They are not threatened with poverty or having to wonder if their lives matter to others or being placed in horrible schools. 

They are, however, part of the epidemic of young people wondering if their lives matter enough to themselves to continue living.  As a mom, I wonder how much I contribute to that voice in their head that says they don’t do anything right, that no one sees them, that there’s nothing better in the future.  Because if that’s what they hear, part of that is ME. 

Trying to get them to see the world as I want to see it – full of opportunities to help others, full of the wonders of the glories of nature, full of a collection of humans with amazing variety of knowledge and experiences – also means there is a world infested with problems to fix and people unlike us who just don’t want to see it.  And that’s sad.

And it was sadness that started it all this morning because it is Monday and it is early and Lila is the new kid at school.  It’s big school and she’s a social animal and it’s hard to be on the outs.  There were tears and lots of moments where I had to hold back my own impatience with her emotions and understand how truly difficult it is for her.  Hugs, hugs, and more hugs, sprinkled with a little bit of perspective. 

My issue is why I felt like she needed those sprinkles of perspective.  I’m trying to help her see that bogging herself down with negative thought over negative thought is a dangerous place to be; you stop seeing the positive.  But I also want her to be ok with just feeling bad sometime.  She doesn’t have to always look for the sunshine behind the clouds.  She doesn’t have to fake feeling good.  She doesn’t always have to pay meanness back with kindness.  I’m looking for the balance.

That’s how I deal.   But is it how I want my kids to deal?  Not really.  I don’t want them to have reservations about where they are and how they feel.   I want them to have a little more confidence that their desires, feelings, worth, and abilities are wholly justified.  My struggle is that I can’t justify things without questioning them.  I always have reservations.

When they were babies, I felt like my job was only to show them how much I loved them so that they would leave our home always knowing that they were loved.  Then, they could function in the imperfect world with a solid base, have a place to come home to emotionally.  They could deal with whatever came their way.

They are no longer babies.  And I feel that parenting has gotten way more complicated.  Pitfalls abound.  The good news is that they are mostly their own person now.  My role has become a bit of a nattering voice in the driver’s seat who annoys them with questions about their life and commentary about current events and the occasional embarrassing singing episode.  

But maybe I need to return to how I parented my babies a bit more.  Maybe my only real purpose is to love them as hard and as often as I can.  Because everything else is unstable.  The questions will always there – in them and in me.  Honestly, I need to do this unbalanced thing because it is the only damn thing I can do without reservations.  Love them.  Love them always.  No holding back.

What I Want to Tell Your Kid

Well, first off, I’m hurt.  Your intention was to hurt someone, I guess, with your nasty Instagram poll and meme.  You did.  You hurt Jack.  He obsessed all day about the kid who he thought was his friend who publicly humiliated him on social media.  So, well done.  You hurt his dad, and his sister (maybe), and his mom.  But I’m trying to put that aside and be a parent.  I think this is a learning moment.

What I’m not sure you know is that there is a suicide epidemic in this country.  Kids like you and Jack are killing themselves at higher rates than ever before.  Experts indicate that social media is a factor.  Kids on the spectrum, like Jack, have even higher rates of suicide.  I think it is because although social interactions don’t come naturally to him, he’s smart enough to observe what other kids do and try to do the same thing – and he’s constantly failing.  Do you know how it feels to know you are constantly failing at being normal? 

So, what you have done is shown him that everyone else knows he is failing, too.  In posting your poll about how happy everyone is that he’s leaving, you’ve just reemphasized how disliked he is.  For the rest of his life – because you know he has the memory of an elephant – he will remember how his classmates were happy to see him go.

And it will fester.  It will be added to all the other mean things kids have said to him that he can’t forget.  But it will mean more because it came from someone who had him over to spend the night, who went to QuikTrip with him and bought him doughnuts at DD, who worked on school projects with him.  It came from a “friend.”

It is as a friend that I want to say this next part.  Jack is not the only kid who will remember.  I’m old, almost 46.  Middle school and high school were a long, long time ago.  But I still weigh those men and women by some of the choices they made back then.  Were they a total jerk to their boyfriend?  Did they lie to the teachers?  Did they pick on the little weirdos in the class?  These are the building blocks of their character.  While allowances are made for what they were going through as kids and what they learn as adults, their actions when I knew them as young people are still part of how I see them today.  I don’t know your plans for yourself, but you might want to consider that these kind of digs might get you a few snickers now, but it will cost you in trust.

Trust.  I think that’s why this hurts so much.  We trusted you.  I say ‘we’ because my experience with Jack is that only a certain type of kid is brave enough to be his friend. I feel safe letting Jack hang out with those kids.  It’s usually someone who is smart enough not to be irritated by Jack’s incessant need to be right.  It’s usually someone who understands how valuable Jack’s unwavering loyalty is.  It’s usually someone who appreciates his sense of humor.  But it is always someone who is brave.  Because we know Jack is one of the little weirdos.  Jack knows too.  And his friends know.  Everyone knows.  That’s not really the point. 

The point is what you do with that knowledge.  Jack carries on.  He stays, for the most part, pretty happy.  So I’m hoping he doesn’t turn into one of those sad, sad statistics.  But the teenage years are crazy, so I’m scared.  The people who don’t want to deal with his weirdness, well, they turn away.  Some people are kind.  Some people aren’t. 

You had a chance here, a choice.  It was – to you – maybe a small thing on a day you were bored.  You had this little thought on how to dig on someone.  You followed through.  In that moment, you chose being unkind over kind.  You chose not to stand up for the little guy.  You chose to kick him instead.

My hope is that maybe you realize that your little dig can have big consequences, to him and to you.  And maybe next time you’ll think twice -- or not do it at all. 

Oh.  And you can go fuck yourself.