guy's nephews are very well-behaved. they say "Thank You" "Please," and to trump all, upon my arrival both 9-year-old twins showed up in the living room and asked me if they could help carry my bags in.
i want a kid like this.
the please and thank you part isn't so hard. i was raised that way, and it's a matter of setting a standard and being consistent with it. i have no beef with the way my parents taught my sisters and me manners. i am so thankful for the manners i was taught. what i have issue with was how my parents dealt with discipline at the dinner table.
in this way we were raised in what might be typical for kids raised in the '70s: eat everything on your plate before you leave the table. we were even taught about the "clean plate club," which i thought was a real club all of my childhood, until i found out that it was a total farce, a total LIE not too many years later. but it wasn't just that, but we were forced to eat things that made us sick to our stomachs. for me, it was peas. i forced them down with a gag reflex that is unmatched to this day. it also made me develop a deep sense of hate, over what i now recognize is loss of self-esteem through feeling powerless. this technique taught my sister to be deceitful. she didn't get angry, she just lied. she put the food in her mouth and excused herself to the bathroom ("may i be excused?" - good manners), where she promptly deposited the food into the toilet. when my parents caught on to this, she started hiding the food in houseplants that happened to be nearby. this one no one at the table knew about somehow, until years later, when a load of rotting food was discovered in the hanging plant above her chair at the kitchen table.
as guy and i plan to have a kid, discipline is on my mind often, and how to do it differently from my parents, who i believe, were overly strict and whose discipline grew in me a tremendous amount of anger totally devoid of respect or understanding.
while on the east coast at the home of guy's sister and her two children, i noticed something interesting: a different way of teaching kids to eat what they may not like, but to eat what is good for them. every parent's goal, but these kids were somehow not angry, resentful or deceitful.
it was wednesday night and the whole family was over to celebrate mine and guy's birthdays. one of the twins reached for birthday cake when i heard, "No, J. you cannot have any cake because you did not eat your peas last night." J. looked sad, really disappointed, but said, "Ok." and that was it. there was no argument, no begging, no usual obnoxious kid reaction.
"how are these kids so well-behaved?" i thought. which i've actually thought on many occasions because they're just so damn good, and they're certainly not brainless twits. they are very smart, and very interested in the world.
a week later i'm still thinking about it.
i've thought that it's bad that kids should have to eat vegetables they don't like, and that maybe they can be taught that eating just the vegetables they like is fine. why make them eat things they hate? but i've kept going back to what guy's sister said about the cake and i realized something. they are being taught about actions and consequences in an important, yet benign way.
i want to ask her exactly what she said when they didn't want to eat their peas. it seems to me she is doing this right, but i have yet to find out exactly how she's doing it.
i just don't want to raise a demon kid. and i probably won't, but i also don't want to raise a kid the way i was raised in regards to food. god knows gen x didn't have it easy, based on our general eating disorder epidemic.
i'm not pregnant, and guy and i are years from this situation, but i am thinking everything through. i don't want to be caught off guard, and i want kids like guy's (and soon, my) nephews: polite, but not downtrodden, smart but not smart-ass, grounded, and not filled with a sense of powerlessness (me).
it's got to be crazy-difficult to raise a good human and i don't want to fuck it up.
3 comments:
The sad fact is, you can do everything you think is right and your kid may still choose to go another way. The hardest part is to realize that the kid is his or her own person, with thoughts, desires, fears, insights, blessings and curses that are his or hers alone. Each one is unique, and while they are certainly influenced by the people around them, especially their parents, they will undoubtedly and repeatedly astonish as well as offend you with their differences from you.
I think your point about instilling a sense of empowerment and understanding of actions and consequences is the key. Give the kid the information and the power to make a decision, and the wisdom and confidence to live the result without complaint.
I know you and Guy will make great parents. I can just feel the vibe surrounding you. And I can't wait to hear from your kid how simultaneously wonderful and totally unfair you are!
Actually, reading my comment I change my mind: it's not a sad fact. It's wonderful that kids are unique persons. How else would we get unique adults?
I have one child on the way, raised a foster child for two years, and current sit for three little boys (6, 5 and 4). Orr table rule (since we had to cmoe up with one) is that you have to try something (two or three bites), you don't have to eat it all, but you may not get dessert. We think it's a fair and easily understandable set of rules. There have been times the child has decided to go without dessert if they absoluately don't want to eat something. They're choice, and that's the deal.
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