Who I Am

There has been much convo the last two days on MIM's site (Morphingintomama.typepad.com -- yes, I am still too lazy/busy to learn how to link, but one day,..., one day) about how to handle a child in a tantrum in public. I wrote a comment that was of the "Can't we all just get along?" nature, as in that we should not judge other parents in public because we don't know the whole story. I don't want to explain in any more detail, but go check it out if you care.

ANYWAYS, the stream of incredibly insightful comments from others that were involved has got my little blogging brain thinking. People write really amazing, well thought out things on that site, I tell ya! What it got me thinking about was who I am as a mother. I am so much a product of my past, present and future. Let me explain:

The Past:

My parents were strict as hell. With a capital S. Actually make that all caps. My sister and I were not respected in our family. My parents were young, poor and stressed out, but it was more than that. If we were watching a show and my dad decided he wanted to watch TV, he would just turn our show off. If they ate steak, we ate ground chuck. If we spoke our opinion, we were told we were stupid. We were utterly terrified of my father and his temper.

My sister was cracking me up the other day on the phone. I was talking to her about my recent anxiety attack and how the doctor said it was usually linked to trauma. She said that while there was no single event in our childhood that was traumatic, our overall experience was traumatic in the way of being neglectful. Neglectful sounds too harsh, actually. Maybe a better way to say it was that our parents took no interest in our activities, our friends, and our lives in general. Anyways, here is what she said: "As a parent, if one of my children wet their pants on the bus every day on the way from kindergarten to afterschool care (which I did), I would have thought that something might be wrong. Or if one of my children wet the bed every day until age 12 (which she did), I would have thought that something was a little off. Perhaps we should have paused." There was other stuff, too, but that is just a little taste of our childhood. We were slapped, spanked, and constantly grounded. And we were good kids, by the way. We were A+ students, didn't drink, smoke or do drugs, and were always responsible. But they saw us as a nuisance. Going to our volleyball games got in the way of my dad watching "Bonanza." Letting us go somewhere with a friend was okay once in a while, but a big drag for them. I could go on, but I will save that for my future therapist's couch (MIM, are you available? We are fairly close to you, geographically speaking!)

I realize this transfers to my parenting style. I probably lean too much the other way as a backlash. I want my children to feel free to explore and express and create and imagine. I want them to ask interesting questions and feel that they are in SOME ways my equal. So I think that sometimes when I could be a stricter parent, I choose not to because I don't want to crush their little spirits. I don't want to break their souls and beat them into submission and into my way of thinking. This is crazy, I know. Children SHOULD be able to sit at a table for a meal without "accidentally" falling out of their chair or "just getting up to give Mommy a kiss and hug," but somehow in my mind I would not be supporting their growing creativity by stifling them into societal conventions. Wrong, wrong, wrong, I know, but aren't we all victims of our past in some way?

Past Part 2:

When we lived in Berkely with newborn Henry, my husband traveled 80% of the time. It was HARD. Fussy baby, stay-at-home mom in new city (we moved there practically seconds after he was born), no friends, no family, no outside world. NO help. Somehow that set a bad tone for my beginnings as a mama, and I feel that today I am still making up for that amazingly difficult year or so.

Present:

In some sense boys will be boys, at least most of the time. The hardest days for me are the days that I am around all of my friends with docile little mindful children. I have seen these moms in action. Are they good moms? Yes? Do they do things differently than me? No. Some kids are just more persistent (read "Henry"). My sister-in-law is amazingly calm, and her first daughter is a princess. I felt like ass every day I was around her and her daughter -- UNTIL she had her second daughter. Who is a HANDFUL. And my sis-in-law is sometimes out of her mind with how to handle her. It is validating to me because it makes me not feel like such a failure. Ditto for a few other moms I know. They are all preachy with their first little angel, but then their second one comes along and the same old tricks don't work. One day my sis-in-law called me, absolutely frazzled. She wanted me to take my niece to school. Why? Because her younger daughter spit up on her, her husband was out of town, and it was raining. While I was certainly willing to do her the favor (it takes a village), it made me feel so much better because the morning she was having is like MOST mornings for us. I realized that her life truly IS easier than mine, and that made me feel a lot better knowing that there is a reason that I feel more stressed out than she does. I imagine that it is kind of like finding out that a child has ADD. A moment that you think, "So I am NOT crazy! He really IS harder!"

My solution to the present is to make sure I see my other frazzled mom friends as often as possible. Being around moms of mellow kids makes me feel like I suck, but checking in with my friend that has two boys just like mine makes me feel sane. Misery loves company, yes?

The Future:

While I know that I could be strict and consistent and make my children leave any public place when they are being bad, and make them pick up their toys every time, etc., I have this experimental theory I am working on. I feel that if I raise my children in a way that enables them to be themselves and think freely and explore (so long as they are not actually damaging property) that somehow they will turn out to be amazing, creative adults. It's just a theory, though. Check on my blog "Being A Mom Of Serial Killers" in 20 years if I am wrong.

Don't get me wrong. I do discipline them often. If they are fighting repeatedly, they are either forced to separate or forced to stay in their room together (depending on the situation and my mood). If they hit me (this has only happened once or twice), they are in bigtime trouble. If they run away from me in the store, I will not take them to the store with me again (still haven't, since Friday). I could go on. But I am definitely lax in some areas, and I keep going back to my childhood. Am I making up for parents who let me make no choices? I don't know. I am just trying to survive each day and hoping for the best in the end.

One more note on the future. I noticed that MIM and a few commenters on her site have a background in some form of child/family education. I wish I was so lucky. That may in part be why I sometimes suck at this. I think it must be a huge advantage to have years of study on young children when you are raising them. Unfortunately I don't have that.

I DO rock at teaching high school. I truly get teenagers and how to deal with them effectively. And I have a ton of experience at it. I sincerely hope that this will be a huge benefit to me and my children when we hit their teens years. All of you Young Child Experts feel free to come to me for advice when your kids hit 14. Maybe then I will be of some use. For now, though, I kind of suck. But I care. But I suck. But I love them more than the world. But I suck. But I will rock when they are rebellious teens, right? Right?

In summary, I am just doing the best I can. Some days good, some days bad. Some decisions good, some decisions bad. Some moms judging me, some moms empathizing with me. Some days me patting myself on the back, some days me wanting to put myself in "time-out." But if I am anything like my mother-in-law ( who I truly adore, by the way, in most cases), I will have blocked this all out by the time my kids are grown. And I will only reminesce (spelling?) about how perfect my kids were and how perfect I was, so it will all be good by then! Like how I look back at Henry's first year and think, "Well, it couldn't have been THAT bad!" But I know that it was. I vowed to remember it, and wrote it down, for the sake of my future daughter-(or son, I am liberal)-in-laws.

We are who we are. We all are great as parents sometimes, but we all sometimes suck, too. But I am so glad that our generation has these conversations. Back a generation ago, parents didn't think. Your kids were just your kids and that was that. There was no blame aspect to the whole thing. While that worked out well for my hubbie's parents (who were awesome), it didn't work so well for mine. They could have used a little more thought in their parenting, or lack thereof. So I am glad that people are a bit more self-reflective in this day and age.

And I hope I am doing a good job. And that I will always be able to sleep at night, at least knowing that my kids know that I love them. And that every day I am trying my best. Failing? Myabe. Succeding? Maybe. But trying. And thinking. And reflecting. Oh, and drinking. Did I mention drinking? That is my best parenting tool!