On Being a Parent

 I was asked to write something about parenting. I don't know if I'm qualified, but I do have experience. I first became a parent a month after my twentieth birthday. I am now toward the end of my sixth decade. That means I have been a parent for more than twice as long as I have not been a parent. I have four children and a large number of grandchildren. This note reflects my aspirations. Sometimes I don't succeed.

I was young, but fortunate, as a first time parent. Both Sarah and I are readers. I also have a tendency to question whatever I am told and try to reason from first principles. Sarah had been working in a good day care center for some time and has a natural affinity for young children. So we read about child rearing. Not just current books, but older ones as well. It became apparent that child rearing is as faddish as all other aspects of culture. This was both troubling and freeing. Troubling because, in a deep sense, no one knows what they are doing. Freeing because reasonable human beings keep being reared despite the fashions. As a species we instinctually know what to do as long as we follow our better nature. We want to touch and hold our children. We want to see them laughing and happy. We want them to be strong, independent, and fearless. Most of us understand that if a child is unhappy, there is a reason for it. We may never find a cause, but there is one. That means an unhappy child needs and deserves love, support, and compassion even if their pain is caused by the trivial or even nothing we can discern.

Children grow to be adults, but they are not adults. They are unreasonable bundles of emotions, actions and reactions. They can sometimes be persuaded by argument, but they are not rational. They are exquisitely and effectively responsive to their environment. Children will mold themselves to get what they need from their environment. They also have all the normal human instincts and emotions: Empathy and cruelty, a sense of fairness and unfairness, love and hate, rewards and revenge. It is important to remember that they respond to the actual environment, not the stated environment. Parents may talk about love, fairness, and respect. If they display disappointment, favoritism, and criticism, the children will respond to the actual environment not the stated one.

Come to think of it, adults are much the same. The difference is that we have a greater mental capacity to examine the world and form rational plans. We also have a more developed capacity to act in accordance with what we think rather than what we feel. As an adult I may feel rage, but if that will not help the situation I will act calmly and unemotionally to make things better.

One very, very, important difference between adults and children is that children are easily distracted. When distracted, they often forget what happened before. My first child, September, was colicky as an infant. That just means she was fussy and often unhappy. That is when I learned that intense physical actions could erase her emotions. When she was fussy I would sometimes hold her high and let her fall, always in my hands, for a few feet. Her internal reaction was basically "what the hell just happened". Processing the experience often erased her previous unhappiness and she could be re-engaged with something happier. It also started me on a path of raw physicality. By the time she was nine months old I would take her and throw her high in the air and catch her on the way down. We both enjoyed it. On the now outlawed spinners in parks (maybe 15 feet across with metal tubes to hold on to) I would push sets of children just as fast as they could take. You had to watch how tight their grips were and whether anyone was turning green, but it was great fun.

For older children, the same lesson applies. When a child is behaving badly you can lecture them and punish them in various ways. However, they simply lack the mental capacity to reflect and change behaviour. A quick explanation is important so they understand how you view the world, but for most incidents after you have explained you can simply erase the situation. I find humor, games, and even the worst mock magic tricks effective. Recently I took an unhappy child who was effectively being punished for bad behavior with siblings and made things ok again by pretending to take a coin from behind their ear. I can't do such a trick, but I made it so apparent that I was disappointed with my repeated failures that it was funny to them. This erased the distress and they could go back to the family without causing additional trouble. The siblings share a short attention span, so the incident was forgotten and reintegration possible. If the punishment had been likely to be effective, I would have left the kid alone. But self reflection is not a strong point for children and I think a wiser course of action is to make the immediate situation better and get back to normal as quickly as possible. In this case, about two minutes.

Once on a family road trip we ran into a blizzard. This did not please my one year old(?) grandchild in his car seat who wanted us to stop and who wanted to be breast fed. Stopping seemed out of the question if we ever wanted to make it home. I drove for maybe six hours as the toddler screamed continuously. Everyone was as kind and patient as we could be with him. We talked and tried to explain, but he did not stop screaming. This made my driving, in a blizzard, on a highway with spun out cars littering the shoulder, "difficult". I must say though, I was impressed with both his stamina and force of will. For a while afterwords I called him The Dark Lord. He has turned into a fine young adult who has learned to control himself better. But I think he still has that underlying determination and force of will.

In that car, there were three generations of people of mixed ages. I like to believe we all modeled and reinforced important lessons: The focus and self control necessary to accomplish what needed to be done in spite of adversity. The ability to act calmly in an emotionally fraught situation. And most importantly, the compassion needed to deal with a child who was, quite reasonably, completely distraught about their situation.

Stories are important. It is how we, as humans, approach life. We tell ourselves stories of who we are, and who we are not. I tell myself the story that I am an honest, intelligent, capable person. I tell myself this, and believe it, despite the fact that I can recite a litany of my deceits, embarrassingly stupid actions, and incompetence. Having this litany is important in being honest to myself. It does not change my view that, on the whole, I am honest, intelligent, and capable. It is something I aspire to even if I don't always accomplish it.

As a parent we have the opportunity, through our actions, to form the inner story a child tells themselves. If they are constantly accused of deception and bad intent, they will form the inner story that they are deceitful and wicked and will behave accordingly. If they are praised for effort and encouraged in kindness, they will form the inner story that they are hard working and kind.

My father's mother, an irish catholic, raised nine boys. Much of it effectively as a single, poverty stricken, mother because her husband developed parkinson's disease and was totally disabled. She was revered by her children and by many of her peers. She said the way to create honest children was to always believe them, even when lies were apparent. That way they understood that the very air around them was filled with an expectation of honesty. It worked. Her children were sometimes SOBs, but they were almost invariably honest. And, as it turned out, invariably intellectually rigorous. They passed these traits to my generation.

I often say that when a child is just born, they rely on us for everything. By the time they are forty five, we hope they rely on us for almost nothing. The art of parenting is managing the transition between the two stages. One important aspect of the transition is agency. Agency is the notion that you can choose a course of action and see it through. As parents I think we should give every child as much agency as possible while still protecting them from irreparable harm. To show them that even adults were children and did things that were not great, I tell young kids stories about times I did embarrassing things. A favorite seems to be the time, when I was about four, I got up from my nap without my mother knowing and walked to the beach (a few blocks away) NAKED. I was brought home in a police car.

In my mind, the statement that I have four children is not quite accurate. For me, any child in my presence is my child. In the presence of a child, I am not important. The child is the important one and what I am thinking and feeling takes a back seat to what they are thinking and feeling. I think this is reasonable because, given the normal course of events, they will be here after I am dead and gone. They will be able to affect the world long after I cannot, and they are the repository of any small legacy of humanity that I hope to leave behind.

Life is often difficult, unfair, and disappointing for each of us. I firmly believe that if anything is going to allow us to improve our lives, it is compassion. For me, that means putting myself aside and trying to understand others. Once we understand, forgiveness is often possible. This includes compassion for ourselves. That does not mean that we condone actions, just that understanding is necessary for correction, change, and redemption.

Compassion is especially important around children. It not only makes their lives better and happier, it also makes for an emotionally supportive environment. That environment allows them to grow into better people.

My basic advice to other parents is this. Compassion begins with putting aside your needs, your emotions, your desire for a different world. As the Buddhists say, "Comparisons are odious". Look at your current children, your current situation. Understand it, and make it better. Do this with as little regard for yourself as you can manage. You have a lot to juggle and a lot of responsibilities. Sometimes when the toddler is screaming, you just have to tend to business and drive the car. Remember, you are the least important person in the room.