I Think She's Got It

When your kids start deciphering for themselves that they don't want to play with the kids that aren't nice to them or other people, it's a beautiful thing.  All the years of making decisions on behalf of them and trying to coax them to speak, act, and behave in a way that is respectful to themselves and others, and also to expect thoughtful behavior from others, has paid off. 

Now I realize that the cards can fall either way, depending on the day, the child, and the circumstances.  However, the first time I heard my daughter say, "I don't care" when I extended an offer for a playdate with one of her friends, I realized that my child had taken a stand, even if just for one day, and I was proud.  She didn't go into detail, or try to explain what I already knew was transpiring, through witnessing interactions with her friend and my daughter or with her friend and other adults, including her own parents and teachers.  My kid didn't stoop to gossiping.  She just indicated that it didn't matter to her, which is code for, no thank you.

My eldest is a super social kid and if she had her choice, she would have playdates 7 days a week.  Super close friends, mild acquaintances, neighbors across the street, or new kids at school, she's a sucker for any social opportunity that presents itself.  But she's also a big believer in showing consideration for others.  She treats all people, her friends, her family, her teachers, the people she meets on the street, with kindness and compassion.  She feels most comfortable when the people around her do the same.  While she gives most kids the benefit of the doubt when they're having an off day, assuming that they, like she, sometimes forget to use their manners, she often will remind them of such.

I noticed over the past few weeks, though, that she had reached her limit with one little friend, and that the relationship was heading toward a hiatus.  I decided to take an inactive approach and not try to steer her in any specific direction as she shared with me her disappointment in her friend's words and actions, but just to listen to her process aloud the problem she was encountering with her friend.  We simply reviewed the issues with said friend and compiled a list together of her options.  She could a) ignore the disrespectful behavior and continue on with her friendship; b) mention to the friend that her behavior is rude to those around her and ask her to change the behavior; or c) walk away or disengage from the relationship.

I didn't think much else about the conversation, as I remember going through friendship drama myself as a girl, and know that these things ebb and flow:  today a friend, tomorrow a foe, and next week a bestie.  Additionally, I know that no story has simply one side.  My kiddo could be creating part of the problem as well.

Then recently my younger daughter, who likes to hang with the big dogs and who is traditionally tough as nails, even with kids twice her age, came crying to me, complaining that the same friend was making fun of her and being mean.  I didn't think much of it until I saw my older daughter's face.  The deadpan stare right through me said it all, after witnessing the interaction.

I still didn't know how it all would play out, as my older daughter, while loyal to the end of the earth, has a hard time with speaking up for herself, and even more of an issue with confrontation.  But when the invitation for a playdate days later was not acknowledged in the usual manner by my daughter, of running to get her shoes on, but instead not even glancing up for her craft project with her little sister, I knew a line had been drawn in the sand.  This was her way, just for today, just for this minute, to take control of a situation she's not pleased with.

Maybe tomorrow the girls will be back to being best buds.  Maybe not.  But for today, I think she's got the right idea!  Kudos, Sweet Girl.

Own Your Happiness

I was sitting on the front steps of a building listed for sale, with my real estate agent, when it happened:  I used my kids’ happiness and well-being as a justification for a decision I was making.

The agent and I were discussing the community where I currently reside with my family.  She asked me why my girlfriend, Katie, and I wouldn’t consider moving our family to another neighborhood, less than a mile away, where the local school was, in her opinion, as good, if not better than the one our daughter currently attends, as it would open up additional housing options for us.

I answered her question with reasons that included the proposed school does not have equally high test scores, the suggested neighborhood is too hoity-toity and unfriendly, and we don’t want to start over in a new place and circle of people.  

And then I topped off my explanation with, “And most importantly, we don’t want to uproot the kids from their current school, friends, and community.”

And there you have it.  I was using my kids’ security as an umbrella motive for the choice to stay in our ‘hood.  I’ve done it before and I’ve definitely heard other people do it.  This parenting trend of using our children’s happiness as just cause for action was brought to my attention a few years ago, when Katie and I were considering another major life change, moving back to Chicago from Dallas.  At the time, my parents thought we were crazy for considering a move away from the shiny, happy north Dallas suburban neighborhood where we resided, back to the gloomy, dirty, city streets of Chicago.  Our last home in Chicago, where we had lived as a young couple with a new baby, faced the back end of a commercial building which housed a discount store that discarded irregulars every night out of their back door into the dumpster.  Homeless people would wait for the discards every evening and carry them off, in some cases even wheeling the whole dumpster down the street, while drug users would huddle around the abandoned lot next door to get their fix without too much observation.  Conversely, in Texas, eight pristine 2-story stone homes with perfectly manicured yards, neatly concealed garage doors, and well-groomed families, separated my sister’s home from ours, which overlooked a green space attached to the newly built elementary school.  Our collective children were not only close in age, but the best of friends.  

Judging on that alone, most folks were shocked with our decision to move back to Chicago, after living in Texas only four years.  In response to their awe, I’d list point after point as validation for our anticipated move back north, but I’d always end it with, “I just don’t want my kids to be raised like this.”

After giving my dad the same schpeel over the phone one evening, he called me out and said, “Stacy, you’re using your kids’ well-being as an excuse for something that you want to do.”

He was right.  As parents, we use often use our kids’ best interest as a rationalization for our actions.  Since when did it become socially acceptable to hide our own adult intentions and reasoning under the veil of “I’m doing it for my kids”?  For the life of me, I don’t know why we feel the need to tug at the heartstrings of folks by throwing the kids in there!  

While I can’t speak for all, I can only surmise that, like me, most of us are just weary of standing up for our own convictions and choices at times, as we don’t always have the capacity to field through the oppositions, so we throw in the kids’ well-being as an across-the-board explanation.  While most times others’ opinions don’t even register one iota on my radar, occasionally I find myself trying to keep things copasetic, and customizing my talking points to the audience in front of me.  I don’t question my own decisions, as much as I try to soften the blow to those I know will disagree with my choices.  While it shouldn’t matter what anyone thinks of my decisions, so long as it makes sense to me and my family, the reality of the situation is that every now and then I falter, not wanting to rock the boat, especially if it’s a family member, whose opinion in fact matters to me.  

In the conversation with my dad about moving from Texas, it took a while for me to recognize my faulty justification process, but once I got the connection, I came back to him with authority and stance.  The real deal is that I didn’t want to be tempted, as a parent, to raise my own children with the entitlement that was common in children in our surroundings in Dallas.  As an individual, I did not want to have to constantly check myself so that I too, wouldn’t fall prey to the siren of what’s good for The Jones’ is good for me, in regards to blatant disregard for living within one’s means and using material possessions as a symbol of status.  As a partner/girlfriend/lover, or whatever ridiculous name I had to use to describe myself, in relation to the person that should be my wife, I did not want to continue to have to repeatedly explain the relationship to new people I met, who just didn’t get it, and usually clung to its novelty as a talking point for future conversations, reducing us to simply ‘the lesbians on the block.’  And finally, as a normally optimistic, fun-loving person, I simply did not want to be unhappy anymore because I didn’t fit into the stereotypical mold of the region.

The bottom line is that we parents are, in most cases, adults that can and should not only make, but also take ownership for, our decisions without trying to appeal to the senses of our audience by using the kids.   More importantly, we should not be kidding ourselves that our actions are prompted by the wants and needs of our children.  If we’re honest with ourselves, by the mere title of parent, we should be factoring our children into our daily decision-making process, without it having to be a separate line-item.  Parents are human beings with needs, wants, hopes, and dreams of our own that are not all specifically tied to our offspring.  

There is no doubt that by feeding our own happiness, we will inevitably be better parents, partners, family members, workers, and friends.  Yet why, when we cross the threshold of parenthood, do we no longer take our own joy, for personal gratification’s sake alone, seriously?  It’s possible there’s no time to take stock of where our actual lives fall in relation to our pre-parental expectation of our lives, because we’re constantly on kid duty.  It’s likely that we’ve lost track of who we really are as individuals in that same full-time mentoring role.  It’s also conceivable that we’ve just gotten lazy in our thoughts, similar to our yoga-panted dress code, and decided to coast under the radar and just view ourselves as mothers and fathers instead of multi-faceted people with the desire for fulfillment; we know and use the fact that the title of parent is a stand-alone for worthiness when viewed by society at large.

While I functioned under that auto-pilot guise for a few years after the birth of my first child, it quickly grew stale.  It took years, though, for me to identify it as such.   Fast forward through the rocky years of trying to re-emerge as a creative, opinionated person, that has no fear of, and an eternal want for, change, and I’m back in business.  After much trial and error in identifying and prioritizing my wants  as an individual and balancing them to those of my family, I’m now at a place where I deem my own well-being as prominent as my family’s, in my decision-making.  While I’m not afraid of factoring myself in, I still sometimes err on the side of defaulting to my children’s future when it comes to explaining my decisions to others.  Maybe it’s because the ‘others’ I speak of today are much different than the ‘others’ of a few years ago.  A longtime serial friend accumulator, I have mostly ditched the vast quantity of casual friends and acquaintances once held and replaced them with long-term, quality friends, of whom I’d never hesitate to call ‘family’. 

So my final answer to the question of why not move to a new neighborhood to my real estate agent, who, of course is also a longtime friend whom I also view as a ‘family’ member, I had to finally laugh and say, “Enough with the kids.  It’s really for me and Katie, as we love where we live.”

We have finally found and united with a tight-knit co-op of inventive people, who not only subscribe to the “it takes a village” mantra, but also foster their own artistic endeavors.  In this true community of neighbors and friends, where we all give and receive of one another without ever second-guessing the relationship, and exist with all of our various talents, traits, and shortcomings, I am truly happy.  I wouldn’t give that up for the world.  In this scenario, I proudly say I am putting myself first, and the kids at second fiddle, where they should be. 

I am a parent and that makes me responsible for setting a good example for my children.  If I want my children to be happy, I need them to see me cultivating my own happiness, so they can in turn, learn to feed their own. 

Going Along For the Ride

Last night I was watching a segment on Nightline about kids and strangers.  Kids, grouped by ages and sex, were put in a test scenario, where they didn’t know they were being watched via camera by their parents and the Nightline crew.  They were all being assessed on the “don’t talk to strangers” mantra that had been pounded in their brains since they were old enough to comprehend words.  Experiments were conducted where older kids were enticed into giving their names, phone numbers, and even addresses, when asked by an unknown person under the guise of a television star recruiter.  Smaller children were lured into the back of an ice cream truck to see ‘how ice cream is made’ and to ‘choose the music that blares out of the truck.’  Some of the kids saw through the schemes and didn’t take the bait to trouble.  They stood their ground and refused to do what they knew in their hearts and heads was a trap.  The majority of the kids, though, regardless of age or gender, eventually fell prey to the predators, giving out personal information, leaving with strangers, and getting in the ice cream truck to have the door shut behind them.

Many of the children started off on the right track, questioning the intention of the strangers, trusting their own instincts. At some point during the interaction, though, those same kids folded after they saw and heard the other kids in their group trusting the unfamiliar person enough to do what the foreigner asked them to do.  The parents watched in dismay as most of the kids, one by one, joined the masses and caved under pressure.   

The camera would zoom in for a close-up of a parent as she responded with shame, “Obviously we didn’t do a great job in teaching him to beware of strangers.”

No, what you didn’t do was teach your child to think on his own.  The piece was chilling to me, not because of the stranger danger scenario, but because of the example it served of children starting at a very early age following the masses and not using or trusting their own judgment.  It hit a nerve in me because I had just spent the past few days trying to understand how the noxiously disruptive “USA, USA” chant had spread so quickly across the audience at the Republican National Convention last week, keeping a female Puerto Rican delegate from taking the podium in a timely fashion, after having already been introduced.  It did not come off in the best light, to say the least.

Fast forward and those Dateline children could be the same people causing a ruckus at the RNC.  Sure there was some sort of explanation for why the ironic chanting of “USA, USA” was rudely interrupting Zoraida Fonalledas, the chairwoman of the Committee on Permanent Organization, from making her speech.  Whatever the point of the chant, it was obvious from the video footage that not everyone screaming it knew why they were even screaming it.  Here’s where my astonishment lies.  As the cameras panned across the audience, they focused on the young guys that seemed to be repeating their mantra with absolute conviction.  Of what, I’m not sure.  The cameras then rested on the faces of people that seemed horrified to be in the audience at that exact moment and that were not joining in.  The video cameras next caught person after person hesitantly joining in on the chant, then increasing their volume and confidence, as they heard and saw others doing it too.  It was shocking to see so many people, young, old, male, female, all white, jumping on a bandwagon that I’m guessing they knew nothing about, especially one that was emblazed with IGNORANT on the side!  The point of the chant, regardless of its intent, was completely lost to its untimely overlap with the introduction of a speaker, a female Puerto Rican speaker.  Come on y’all!  Didn’t your mama ever give you any hometrainin’?

From a young age, my biggest pet peeve with many of my friends and family members can be boiled down to this:  making decisions based on what everybody else is doing, or sometimes not even making decisions at all, but just blindly saying, acting, or doing things just because others do.  I remember never wanting to follow the norm for the sake of just following the norm.  I was curious as to the ‘why’ of decisions that kids, parents, and teachers around me were making.  It was imperative to me that I know why I was doing what I was doing, before I ever did it.  A lifetime challenger of everything and everybody I came across, I was often a lone dissent on many issues and trends growing up and on into adulthood. Of course I was wrong often, but more frequently than not, made good decisions, even if they didn’t parallel those of my peers.  Today, as parent to both a nine-year-old daughter and an almost four-year-old girl, I’ve spent more time trying to teach them to make their own decisions, trust their own instincts, and be their own people, than I ever have with cautioning them on strangers, predators offering them candy, or the rant of politicians who want to keep their parents from legally marrying and their school classrooms filled with WASPs.  I want my kids to THINK.  I want them to believe in themselves and their unique qualities, capabilities, and brain power so that they can grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults with confidence in their own judgment.

As parents, how can we keep our kids from just following the herd (and ending up on national television, looking like a racist)?  We can lead by example.  We can forge a path that makes sense for our own family, instead of one that corresponds with the Jones’s path.  We can make authentic decisions without fear of backlash from our peers, illustrating to our kids that they can do the same and survive unscathed.  We can take a moment of clarity each time we see our children making choices solely at the discretion of our personal beliefs as parents.  We can redirect them to view the world as THEY SEE IT, not just how we see it.  We can teach them to respect every person, even the ones we don’t agree with or don’t like, every single minute of every single day.  We can enforce manners as being paramount in life’s lessons and punish our children for interrupting when another is speaking.  We can stop enabling them to be a herd follower by saying NO when our kids ask us for toys or clothing of a certain label or type, because “that’s what all the other kids have,” instead of going out and buying it because we don’t want our child to feel ‘different.’  We can quit stereotyping people and situations in front of our children, which not only forms an opinion for them, but also gives them license to enforce that opinion, without ever putting an ounce of thought into it.  We can give our children knowledge instead of just opinion.  Encourage them to soak up every bit of fact and theory that comes their way.  We can promote education-based decisions in our children by showing them how it’s done:  live genuinely and without regard to how the guy in the next seat is living his life.