Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The real truth about why I write about babies so much
9:09 PM | 
Posted by
Amanda J. Moreno
Confession: The real reason I write about parenting babies more than parenting older children is that babies are easy to explain. The truth is, I find parenting to be an endeavor that gets harder the further it progresses, and the real tests of my own mettle as a parent are just beginning to emerge with my 4- and 6-year-old daughters.
You often hear parents-to-be (especially Dads, I find) talk about being scared about parenting a baby because they are so delicate and they don’t talk so you never know what they want. When they talk, that’s when the real fun begins! My theory is kind of the opposite of that. It’s because babies are what I call “evolutionary creatures” and children are what I call “cultural creatures”. Cultural drives are far more complex than evolutionary ones.
Put simply, the older children get, the more comparative reasoning they are able to employ. When you encounter your first, “Mommy, why is their house bigger [smaller] than ours?” you’ll know what I mean. The problems that children age three and under have, as difficult as they are in the moment, are mostly confined to issues of self-regulation. Many tantrums can be explained by the fact that children this age don’t yet respond to cultural cues (e.g., that you’re not supposed to shout in public, call people by their body size or their skin color, or eat dessert before dinner). When these misfires and associated meltdowns rule the day, you can’t wait for the time when they can understand cultural rules better. I say, be careful what you wish for.
I wasn’t nearly so reactive to my children during that innocent period of time, before it was clear that their observations actually meant something. A two-year-old can’t possibly make me feel bad when she spits out my food, but when she’s five? Then it’s personal. Children don’t begin to challenge your own image of yourself until there are expectations of them. With expectations, comes the chance that those expectations won’t be met (or rather, the guarantee that they sometimes won’t be met). Before you start wishing for greater cognitive understanding (which is like wishing babyhood away!), think carefully about how life changes dramatically when you can appropriately use the phrase, “You know better than that!” It’s the beginning of the end of innocence.
Despite the fact that my professional identity is related to early childhood education, Quinlan’s transition from preschool to kindergarten was a rough one for me. I don’t think this was simply because she was 4 when she started (my peanut-sized September baby, and the dreaded mid-August first day of school in Colorado). I knew intellectually that preschool was some sort of utopia compared to the big, bad world of elementary education, but it is one of those things you have to experience for yourself. In preschool, you drop off and pick up right inside the classroom. In elementary, it’s curbside and crossing guards. In preschool, you talk to your child’s teacher - in person -at least twice a day. In elementary, you find out what’s going on by what your child tells you. Your child makes transitions from place to place during her day that remain mysterious to you. Not only do you have no control, you often have no knowledge of the daily happenings in your child’s life. That sounds more like an appropriate transition to middle childhood or the tweens, but the fact is, the world of school opens your child up – at the age of 5 or 6 (or 4 in some cases!) – to a significant chunk of experiences that are not shared with you – AND, your child is aware of this.
I find this process of becoming separate people a difficult one. It’s as if, because I know I am on a steady path of losing more and more of my grip on my children, I make feeble attempts to regain control. I ask too many questions, feel too responsible, insert myself, seek approval. If you think you have to be “pathologically enmeshed” to have difficulty teasing apart your child’s life from your own, think again. On the one hand, we set expectations that are too high. On the other hand, we try to protect our children from uncomfortable feelings and experiences even though we have no power (or business) to do so. Such struggles are all different sides of the same coin known as “letting go”.
I learned a lesson about differentiation/individuation (you know, letting go) this summer when Quinlan became the bad guy – in a play in drama camp. Not only did she not get to be the princess, she had to be evil AND male. By the time I picked her up that day when “What part did you get?” was the first question out of every parent’s mouth, Quinlan’s attitude was one of coy happiness. She was beginning to get the idea that for some reason, grown-ups thought it was really cool that she got to be mean and wear a mustache. Turns out she had the second most tears that day when the kids found out – right behind the girl who had to play the prince. I considered it resolved, but Quinlan was determined to let me know that she wasn’t that happy about the part. Although she was smiling from ear to ear during rehearsals and every time I picked her up, she sprinkled, “I’m still mad” in various forms into conversations over several days. In my normal momness, I would have reminded her how cool her character was and how happy she seemed, (subtext: “No, you are happy, happy, happy, and I have no reason to feel guilty for putting you in a position that would make you anything other than constantly happy!”) But seeing A) that she WAS happy, and B) her determinedness to tell me she was sad, gave me a unique opportunity to observe these contrasting truths. Children have feelings, and then they want you to know certain things about their feelings, and only when children reach a certain cognitive capacity can these be different. This time I could tell the difference, so I had the good sense to leave myself out of it.
I wanted to remember this for future moments when I won’t be able to tell the difference, because the upside won’t be so apparent. This makes me think of families I know that are going through divorce, and how infinitely more difficult letting go must be. After all, children from divorced families need a healthy individuation process too, but divorcing parents run a high risk of taking every separation-related upset as a personal failure. They might feel guilty for not knowing details of their children’s lives, or be reluctant to ask their children to do things independently. They might wrongly attribute ordinary, developmentally normal upsets, to upsets about ***the divorce***.
I don’t have the perfect advice for parents going through the pains and joys of their children making their way toward independence – regardless of what the family structure may look like. As far as I’m concerned, if we can just learn to interpret “I’m still mad” to mean “I still want to talk about it”, we’re all doing fine in my book.
You often hear parents-to-be (especially Dads, I find) talk about being scared about parenting a baby because they are so delicate and they don’t talk so you never know what they want. When they talk, that’s when the real fun begins! My theory is kind of the opposite of that. It’s because babies are what I call “evolutionary creatures” and children are what I call “cultural creatures”. Cultural drives are far more complex than evolutionary ones.
Put simply, the older children get, the more comparative reasoning they are able to employ. When you encounter your first, “Mommy, why is their house bigger [smaller] than ours?” you’ll know what I mean. The problems that children age three and under have, as difficult as they are in the moment, are mostly confined to issues of self-regulation. Many tantrums can be explained by the fact that children this age don’t yet respond to cultural cues (e.g., that you’re not supposed to shout in public, call people by their body size or their skin color, or eat dessert before dinner). When these misfires and associated meltdowns rule the day, you can’t wait for the time when they can understand cultural rules better. I say, be careful what you wish for.
I wasn’t nearly so reactive to my children during that innocent period of time, before it was clear that their observations actually meant something. A two-year-old can’t possibly make me feel bad when she spits out my food, but when she’s five? Then it’s personal. Children don’t begin to challenge your own image of yourself until there are expectations of them. With expectations, comes the chance that those expectations won’t be met (or rather, the guarantee that they sometimes won’t be met). Before you start wishing for greater cognitive understanding (which is like wishing babyhood away!), think carefully about how life changes dramatically when you can appropriately use the phrase, “You know better than that!” It’s the beginning of the end of innocence.
Despite the fact that my professional identity is related to early childhood education, Quinlan’s transition from preschool to kindergarten was a rough one for me. I don’t think this was simply because she was 4 when she started (my peanut-sized September baby, and the dreaded mid-August first day of school in Colorado). I knew intellectually that preschool was some sort of utopia compared to the big, bad world of elementary education, but it is one of those things you have to experience for yourself. In preschool, you drop off and pick up right inside the classroom. In elementary, it’s curbside and crossing guards. In preschool, you talk to your child’s teacher - in person -at least twice a day. In elementary, you find out what’s going on by what your child tells you. Your child makes transitions from place to place during her day that remain mysterious to you. Not only do you have no control, you often have no knowledge of the daily happenings in your child’s life. That sounds more like an appropriate transition to middle childhood or the tweens, but the fact is, the world of school opens your child up – at the age of 5 or 6 (or 4 in some cases!) – to a significant chunk of experiences that are not shared with you – AND, your child is aware of this.
I find this process of becoming separate people a difficult one. It’s as if, because I know I am on a steady path of losing more and more of my grip on my children, I make feeble attempts to regain control. I ask too many questions, feel too responsible, insert myself, seek approval. If you think you have to be “pathologically enmeshed” to have difficulty teasing apart your child’s life from your own, think again. On the one hand, we set expectations that are too high. On the other hand, we try to protect our children from uncomfortable feelings and experiences even though we have no power (or business) to do so. Such struggles are all different sides of the same coin known as “letting go”.
I learned a lesson about differentiation/individuation (you know, letting go) this summer when Quinlan became the bad guy – in a play in drama camp. Not only did she not get to be the princess, she had to be evil AND male. By the time I picked her up that day when “What part did you get?” was the first question out of every parent’s mouth, Quinlan’s attitude was one of coy happiness. She was beginning to get the idea that for some reason, grown-ups thought it was really cool that she got to be mean and wear a mustache. Turns out she had the second most tears that day when the kids found out – right behind the girl who had to play the prince. I considered it resolved, but Quinlan was determined to let me know that she wasn’t that happy about the part. Although she was smiling from ear to ear during rehearsals and every time I picked her up, she sprinkled, “I’m still mad” in various forms into conversations over several days. In my normal momness, I would have reminded her how cool her character was and how happy she seemed, (subtext: “No, you are happy, happy, happy, and I have no reason to feel guilty for putting you in a position that would make you anything other than constantly happy!”) But seeing A) that she WAS happy, and B) her determinedness to tell me she was sad, gave me a unique opportunity to observe these contrasting truths. Children have feelings, and then they want you to know certain things about their feelings, and only when children reach a certain cognitive capacity can these be different. This time I could tell the difference, so I had the good sense to leave myself out of it.
I wanted to remember this for future moments when I won’t be able to tell the difference, because the upside won’t be so apparent. This makes me think of families I know that are going through divorce, and how infinitely more difficult letting go must be. After all, children from divorced families need a healthy individuation process too, but divorcing parents run a high risk of taking every separation-related upset as a personal failure. They might feel guilty for not knowing details of their children’s lives, or be reluctant to ask their children to do things independently. They might wrongly attribute ordinary, developmentally normal upsets, to upsets about ***the divorce***.
I don’t have the perfect advice for parents going through the pains and joys of their children making their way toward independence – regardless of what the family structure may look like. As far as I’m concerned, if we can just learn to interpret “I’m still mad” to mean “I still want to talk about it”, we’re all doing fine in my book.
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This is a lovely article, and I wished I had read it when my parents were divorcing - even though I was 15! Thanks for writing and sharing this.
Love the story about summer camp - allowing people, even/especially our own little people, to have their own complex truths, is a big goal of mine...
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