At a party last week, I was cornered by a long-time acquaintance whose three children are each about eight or ten years older than my three kids. She wanted to know my "secret" to parenting.
"How did you manage to keep your kids Jewish? How is it that they still are so respectful? How did you get them to get along with each other so well?"
"Um, Dianna, isn't it a bit late for you and your kids?"
Luckily she assumed I was making a joke, took it with a smile and said that she's working on her doctorate. She was looking for information on birth order and parenting. I assured her I'd give her all my parenting "secrets," but just not right then, as we were making our way to the the dinner table. I started to think about what I'd tell her if she did call me.
You make a lot of decisions when you are a parent. (Well, I hope you do...) This is part one of what I think will be a multi-part blog piece with some thoughts about raising kids to be healthy, mentschy, "normal" human beings in this not-so-normal world.
Before we even had children, and certainly when they were very young parents, my husband and I were deliberate in our choices... We will raise our three children in a house that promotes peace, and love. I believed then, and believe now that every generation must be the next generation that comes closer to an understanding of true peace. I wanted our home to reflect what I teach in my classes.
- No weapons in the house.
- Toys will be gender neutral.
- No violence on television.
- No cursing or negative, hateful language.
Hah hah hah.
The first time we were challenged just slightly with our crazy gender neutral parenting ideas was when our oldest, "Daniel," was in nursery school. He must have been 4, and our daughter, "Maya" was 1 1/2.
His teacher, Miss Laura, asked me to stay after the other moms had left with their toddlers. She was very solemn. Daniel was never naughty. Not at home and not at school, so I was immediately concerned. She let Daniel continue to "read" in the library corner, and said to me in a hushed voice, "I need to tell you something very serious." I felt my heart race. I looked at him. He seemed fine. I looked back at Laura and she was clearly very nervous to tell me...
"Yes, what is it?"
"Daniel wants to be Queen Esther in our Purim Parade."
"Oh, ok."
My pulse goes back to a normal beat.
"You know, not Ahashveros, not Mordechai or Haman. Queen Esther."
"Yes, I get it. That's fine."
"It's fine?"
"Yes, it's completely fine, let him make the Queen Esther costume."
I looked at my perfectly happy, healthy son and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Having completed cancer treatments less than a year before and not being sure my next scan would be clean, this was anything but serious. He identifies with Queen Esther, eh? The hero of the story...I always related more with Vashti, but okay. (I'd be a lot more worried if it were Haman, the evil-doer who wanted to kill the Jews.)
I scooped up my delicious, healthy, son and put him in his carseat and brought him home.
On the day of the Purim parade, there marched my son, with his crown and cape, and he beamed as he knew how great he looked. (The fact was, the kids made their costumes and they all looked pretty much the same. Except for the little Hamans. They had sinister looking black paper hats, and black paper mustaches that fell off about 2 minutes after the parade started.)
Not long after that came the twin cursing incidents of the winter of '92.
I supposed that every family has a story or two like these.
I had asked my husband to work hard to curb his language when we had children. He agreed with me that this was a good idea. It was not just about cursing, but all kinds of language that I did not want our children to ever hear in our house. I'm proud to say that we do not use "hate," "stupid," or "shut-up" directed at one another to this day.
A bit of history here: Our two cats, of blessed memory, had been with us for many years and had edged right up into pure decrepitude by this point in our family life. Not a day went by when one or the other cat didn't miss the litter box entirely, or cost us a fortune at the vet. To say that they were long past bringing us joy is putting it kindly. One night, little Daniel came in to see my husband very upset about something. He was muttering and tromping around the living room, and innocently, Daniel asked, "Dad, is it the fucking cats?"
This was immediately followed by a family dinner to our favorite Chinese Restaurant, the Great Wall. Little Maya was on her daddy's shoulders, and we ran from the car to the doors of the restaurant, through the snowy, slushy parking lot. I held Daniel's hand on this messy night, right behind them. As we walked in through the doors, a huge pile of melting snow/slush fell on my husband's bald head, causing him to yell out, "Shit!" This delighted my toddler daughter to no end: The splash of the snow, the yelling of a brand new word, the excited reaction from me. The rest of the night, Maya sat in the high chair at the Great Wall restaurant exclaiming "Shit! Shit! Shit!" enjoying her soup and noodles, and mortifying me and my mom, (and probably secretly delighting my dad). My husband became MUCH more careful about his language after that.
As our kids grew up, the BAN on cursing morphed into a tolerance on cursing, but only when it was funny. Which was to say, you cannot curse at another family member, but it was okay for comedic effect.
Then there was my ban on weapons.
Easy enough to enforce with our first two children. Daniel and Maya never missed them. At other children's homes, they were not interested, and I was the slightly smug mom who raised the peaceful new generation of mini-hippies. They shall learn war no more. Not in my house. Nope. Not until "Jack" was born. Before this little guy was out of the crib, he had turned everything in sight into a weapon. We still didn't buy him any guns or swords; there was no need! Each tree branch was a perfect pistol or rifle. Whether he was a Jedi or a ninja, every toy in the playroom was re-purposed into his trusty weapon, and stowed into his belt. A favorite sword was the snorkel, which I believe also served as a secret walking stick, until he left it in the movie theater in our town. He was so utterly despondent we went back to find it, but it had been discarded with the containers of half-eaten pop-corn and overly-sweetened slushies. Eventually we got Jack a knight costume that came with a little plastic sword, and there was no going back.
I came to understand that this was the way he needed to play. Pretending that the plastic knife from the play kitchen was a dagger during the Robin Hood phase satisfied or soothed something in him and allowed him to pretend, in the same way that my older son found joy in creating masterpieces with Legos, and my daughter found outlets with her art kits. If I had taken away the markers from Maya, she would have found the crayons, take them away and she would find the colored pencils. Was little Jack going to grow up to be a war-mongering overlord? I didn't know. I decided that I would continue to parent as best as I could, trying to monitor what he watched on tv and supervise the way he played with others so that he learned what was and was not appropriate play. Pretending you are pirates on the swingset is okay. Pushing younger kids off and saying they have fallen off the plank is not okay. ("That's a time out. Why? Because you aren't really a pirate.")
After I said yes to Jack having a sword, and later, a fake gun* from Wild West City** I was pretty sure I knew what I'd say to Daniel when he asked if he could have a Barbie Doll. I can't say I didn't think about it a little bit. I had a few concerns. Would he want to bring it to school, and if he did, would he get teased? Should I insist that he should get a Ken doll? Should I ignore his request and see if he forgot about it? And the big question... if you buy a boy a Barbie, will that make him gay?
Let's get that last question out of the way, and let me just say that was for the benefit of any parent who is reading this now and is going through something similar. Because let's face it. A toy cannot possibly have the power to change a person's sexual identity. So the real question was, is there a chance that my child may grow up and realize he's gay? And will buying him a Barbie now change that later?
Here's what I did, and I am pretty sure I discussed it with my husband, though now I don't remember the conversation. The kids' babysitter, Meggie wanted to buy the kids each something for Hanukkah, and Daniel had asked her too. So she asked us if it would be alright, and knowing this was a way that Daniel needed to play, I said yes, please don't spend too much, but sure. Meggie bought him a Barbie and a Ken, and Daniel was a very happy guy. He did not ask to bring them to school.
What lessons did I learn from my children's play habits? My daughter Maya loved to play with little toy animals, and for a while wanted to be a vet. She also liked to draw on the walls with Sharpie, but had no inclination to become a graffiti artist. She now teaches children in an after-school environmental education program.
My older son, Daniel, as it happens is gay. Jokingly, he says it's because I let him play with the Barbie, but seriously, I think we both know that letting him play with the doll then just means he doesn't need to play with one now, as a 25 year old young man. He's a teacher and a great role model to young people.
And my son, Jack, who, during his Zorro phase carved a giant "Z" into my parents kitchen table with one of their knives? Well, we don't know about him yet. So far he seems to have left his need for weapons behind and has followed in his mother's more peaceful ways, but he's only 18, so we're keeping an eye on him. After spending the summer as a camp counselor, he probably has a few stories of his own to share.
And after all this thinking and writing... so far, Dianna has not called me. And these aren't really all my secrets, not by a long shot... just the first few things that came to mind when I thought about my children, and what I had to think, and re-think as parenting theory gave way to parenting reality.
I wanted to raise each child to be the best most unique person that he or she could be... I hope I am still doing that.
*I did not really say "yes" to the fake gun so much as I didn't have a full-blown fight with my husband in the middle of the OK Corral when he bought it for Jack while I was in the bathroom with Maya.
**Wild West City: The worst, tackiest theme park in NJ. So terrible that we had to go there twice during Jack's cowboy phase. Click here to check it out.
