The burden of perfection

There is, sometimes, such a thing as too good.

I used to have Frances's little lion chair set up with a stepstool placed beside it to hold snacks and drinks when she is watching a dvd. This ended on a day in the winter when we were both ostensibly home sick, yet Frances had, as always, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. She was suspending herself off the big comfy chair beside her little set up, kicking her merry feet, and knocked her glass of apple juice all over the floor. Then she did it again.

I was tired and sick and did not want to drag myself off the couch to mop apple juice off the floor (again) and decided that we were going to get rid of the stepstool. (It wasn't the first time this had happened, just the first time this had happened twice in one day when I happened to be sick.) Her snacks and drinks could go beside her lion chair on the floor. Then they would be out of range of her feet when she was on the big comfy chair. I was, I'll admit, snappish and waspy when delivering this information to her--that's it! It's going, I'm getting rid of this thing, I'm not mopping any more apple juice off the floor because of this stepstool!--but the worst that was directed at her was that she should be more careful of where she was kicking.

This was several months ago and she still periodically assures me that she will never knock the apple juice over again.

It is, I think, a combination of traits: a high level of sensitivity, a very good memory, an eagerness to please which makes her miserable whenever anyone is unhappy with what she has done, and a blooming perfectionism relating to her own behaviour. She is determined to be flawless; then everyone will love her and be happy with her and she can be happy too.

It is the hardest thing about being her mother.

Now, I know that all my mother-readers are dealing with temper tantrums, a desire not to please, what seems like deliberate obtuseness, and so on; and so dealing every day with a child who is bound and determined to behave perfectly does not seem like such a great trial, and it does make the day-to-day management of the household much easier. But it can't possibly be healthy for her.

I ask myself if I am doing anything to contribute to this, and the answer is no, I don't think so. At least I can't think of anything. I try to be cheerful and stable around her; on the rare occasions that I'm not and she tries to comfort me, I thank her and tell her that it isn't her job to make me feel better. (Including headaches and stomach bugs.) If I snap at her, I apologize and tell her that it wasn't her fault; I've tried to reassure her all along that the divorce had nothing to do with her. I do everything I can to support her relationship with her father. I listen whenever she wants to tell me how much she misses him, and how she loves him most. I don't tell her everything will be all right or she will feel better soon; I let her be sad whenever she needs to be. I reign myself in constantly in those rare instances when she approaches misbehaviour: when she whines or stalls or doesn't listen, which is as bad as it gets, the most I've ever had to do is count to three. Even that is often very upsetting for her. All the while I'm telling her that even when I am upset at something she's done, I still love her more than anything; and yet she still acts as if she believes that love will be withdrawn from her and she will be abandoned if she is not perfect.

When, the other night, she was not listening to me and putting her pyjamas on, and I counted to three and she still didn't listen so lost her bedtime story, and I put her to bed, the first thing she said to me the next morning when I woke her up for school, even before "good morning," was, "I promise I will listen to you today, Mummy. Do you love me, even when I don't listen?"

The burden of perfection is far too great for her thin shoulders, but how do I get her to put it down?

The literature on children and divorce presupposes a normal child--an obstinate and wilful creature who frequently and joyfully experiences anger. I was told to expect regression, difficulties with potty training, tantrums, problems sleeping, regression in language abilities, feeding problems.

"Preschoolers can display a wide range of emotional behaviour in a short time. Anger is the most common way for preschoolers to show pain and distress. Hitting, kicking, throwing things, pinching and spitting at other children are common ways for young children to express anger. ...

"Fearfulness is also a sign of anxiety or tension in preschoolers, particularly when it is in response to events the child used to feel comfortable with. Troubled preschoolers may also show sadness, withdrawal or lack of energy." http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/mh-sm/divorce/4_e.html

But Frances is not a normal child. She just rolled with the punches and kept on going, a little sadder and more subdued sometimes. She misses her Daddy and her old house. Sometimes she has nightmares that he came to get her, and then left again. They wake her in the middle of the night, inconsolable. I miss her old nightmares about dragons who burn her up.

"Despite their considerable physical and emotional achievements, preschoolers have a limited ability to understand separation and divorce. For example, because they understand relationships in self-centred terms, children may feel that they are the cause of certain events. Children often believe that a parent's worries and anxieties, and perhaps even the divorce itself, are their fault....

"Children may think that they are being abandoned by their mother, unloved by their father or that they are being punished for angry feelings....

"Children experience a significant loss when one parent is less involved in their lives. Not only will they often miss that parent's presence and affection, but some of their physical and emotional needs may not be met. They often have overwhelming fears that both parents will leave them."

I wonder, sometimes, if that is why she so needs to be perfect. Why those tiny words, those little grains, lodge so deeply and stick in her memory for months. Does she think she is being punished, that she was bad? Is she afraid that she will lose one of us for real if she is not good? If so, where did it come from? Does she really think that if she doesn't listen to me for a few minutes I will stop loving her?

"Personality is a major factor in development and plays an important role in a child's reaction to divorce. By the time children are 3 to 5 years of age, most parents can recognize the ways their children cope with stress. Some children sulk, others 'talk back' or get angry, still others become overly submissive or obedient."

I remember when she was a baby with reflux and everyone else seemed to think she was difficult, that her crying was temperamental, but I could tell that she was actually a very happy baby who only cried when she was in pain. Sure enough, when the reflux got better and she learned to sleep on her own, the crying stopped almost overnight. Ever since she has been that unnervingly obedient, well-behaved, happy, sociable, affectionate little girl I write about so often. So I'm not claiming that the divorce or our reactions to it or the way I parent or Erik parents are solely responsible for her continual struggle to be perfect. But I worry that the sensitivity and the good memory and the desire to please have made it very easy for my particular little girl to blame herself for what happened, believe she is being punished and be terrified that if she is not always good from now on, she will lose one of us forever.And how do I know? How do I look inside that beautiful little blond head of hers to see whether she is really just the most resilient and naturally well-behaved child who has ever existed, or if locked in there somewhere is a void saying it's all my fault?

Posted by Andrea at 9:57 AM | Comments (11)

Mid-Year Resolution (or: another one of Andrea's Bright Ideas)

This week, I did a possibly dangerous thing. I asked Frances what was one thing that she wished I did more of. Her face brightened. "Surprises!" she said.

Indeed. She does love surprises, my girl, especially the kind that come from the t-o-y-s-t-o-r-e. They don't have to be big or expensive or branded or shiny, they just have to be new and unexpected. "I have a surprise for you!" I say. "Oh goodie!" she says. "What is it? What could it be?" And it's just as wonderful if it's a new $4 bottle of mega-bubbles or a $3 ball as if it's a $20 calico critters set.

So. Why not? More surprises for Frances. Preferably, the free kind. Plus, the Happiness Experts say that one reliable way to be happier yourself is to do nice things for other people, which seems reasonable considering how much I love to make her smile.

Free surprises for four-year-olds. Any suggestions?

Favourite dinners. And deserts. Rearranging the toy area. Playdates, maybe. Day trips to the farm. Picnics in the playpark. Renting a movie I think she might like. Homemade cards. Balloons. What else?

Posted by Andrea at 12:29 PM | Comments (16)

Bad Mothers

All mothers have days or weeks or months when our parenting sins are many and we find it difficult to believe that our children will ever make it to a healthy adulthood, when exhaustion grinds us down and all we can see are our mistakes; and we all know of the women eviscerated in the news for abandoning or neglecting or killing their kids. But today I don't want to talk about the common mothering mistakes we all make, or the women who, for whatever reason, turn monstrous. I'm wondering about the liminal place where light and even medium grey shade into charcoal; where no one is being beaten, everyone is being fed, there is genuine love and the parents are trying their best, but mistakes are being made that you can't help but think are going to break those kids one day.

It's a hard subject. After decades of propoganda that seemed almost consciously designed to make every mother feel like crap if she once fed her child food from a can for supper, or was ever less than perfectly patient or responsive, the mood amongst groups of mothers in my experience (online and off) is a sharing of mistakes that results in well-deserved relief and a kind of rah-rah boosterism. Thank god I'm not the only one. We're all fucking up. It can't be so bad after all.

But we all know that there are bad parents out there, and they don't necessarily come with red flags or bloody hands; sometimes bad parents are good employees, good citizens, good friends.

There's value in celebrating our imperfections and our humanity, but I wonder sometimes if it doesn't stifle us when we see something that truly is damaging happening to a child not our own at the hands of his or her parents.

A few weeks ago, Moxie posted about a 70/30 rule. As long as you're doing the right thing about 70% of the time, you're being a perfect parent--as perfect as any parent is capable of being. That's probably true, in most instances. But doesn't it depend on what's in that thirty per cent? You could be flawlessly perfect for 95% of the time and if the other five per cent is incest, that kid's going to be traumatized. There are some things surely that are never ok no matter how rare they are.

I know of a family, for instance, with two little boys, both of whom are a little violent, a little wild, and from everything I can tell completely undisciplined. I've seen times where the mother puts a boy in time out--and the father tells him he can play--and the mother puts him back in time out again--and the father tells him he can play--both of them in the same room, at the same time. The younger boy, who is four and the more violent of the two, is rewarded with very violent video games rated for adults when he does what they ask him to. Is this abuse? Is it neglect? No. Is it illegal? No. Do they love their kids? Yes, undoubtedly. Do I think this is going to harm them? Yes.

I am possibly too aware of my own imperfections as a mother to want to offer unsolicited advice. Frances never eats dinner from a can, but she did have an unconscionable number of cookies on Wednesday, and I let her watch Shrek 3 for the second day in a row because she had blisters on her little feet after wearing new sandals I'd bought her, and I didn't think it would be right for me to force her to play. Still, not a set of stellar parenting moments. I don't have as much time with her as I'd like these days, and when we are together I am often tired and impatient, pressing her to hurry hurry hurry. I know I'm not a bad mother. I love that girl, and I push myself hard every day to be the mother I think she needs as opposed to pushing her to be the kid I want; but I am human and sometimes I fail.

Something in my gut tells me that this is different than rewarding a physically violent child with games that can only reinforce a trait that is already getting him into trouble (he has been kicked out of daycare).

I've known women who spectacularly flounder during their transition to motherhood because after decades of expecting everyone else to take care of them, they can't manage to take care of someone else. It's a horrible thing to say, I know; and we all struggle during that first year to become less selfish and more nurturing than we thought we were capable of. Again, it's not black. It's a shade of grey. Yet when I see someone who is beginning to resent her child for not taking care of her, I don't know what to do. If the child were being beaten, I would be legally required to report it; instead, he or she is only being asked every day to fundamentally alter themselves and parent their parents to meet the emotional wounds of the persons who are meant to care for them. And here the right thing to do is to let it happen.

I'm mindful of the many ways in which the charge of child abuse can be and has been misused--against parents who formula feed or use a form of sleep training, for instance, or who allow the mother to selfishly go to work when they could afford to keep her at home. Does that mean that anything that isn't actually illegal should be ignored?

None of us are perfect parents. Very few of us are monsters. But that doesn't mean that everyone who isn't a monster is good enough, does it? Where does our responsibility to support other mothers' right to be imperfect end? Where does our responsibility to children begin? Only when they're being beaten, starved, raped? What about the child who is fed and housed and has two parents who love him or her very much, who are trying their level best to be good parents, but who can't seem to stop calling their beloved child horrible names whenever they lose their temper? Kids believe everything their parents say, up to a certain age.

You see a child who is being hurt. The way they are being hurt is not illegal, but it could easily affect their future health or happiness in serious ways. The person who is hurting this child loves them more than anything else in the world and is trying their best and is already consumed by guilt over their failures, but chooses to deal with it by reminding themselves that they are trying their hardest and kids are resilient and has never seemingly entertained the idea of asking for professional advice or assistance. It's not a one-time thing; you don't know everything but you know enough to be certain that it's a pattern. Do you have a responsibility? How do you balance your affection for the parent with your concern for their child? Is there anything you can do?

Posted by Andrea at 9:05 AM | Comments (14)

Validation, of sorts

Yesterday when I dropped Frances off at her daycare there was only one other little girl there so far, A. The two of them have one of those peculiar preschool friendships where they love each other and play together all the time and fight all the time because they can't agree on how the playing should be done--Frances has very definite opinions, and A often disagrees and ignores her, and sparks fly. As I was walking out of the room, Frances said to her, "A, I really love my Mommy."

"Aww," said A's mom. "That's so sweet."

"Yes it is," I said by the door, and turned to grin at Frances. "I love you too, sweetpea. I'll see you this afternoon."

I've said before that the only judgment of our parenting skills that counts is the one given by our children. The strangers in the playground and our own parents and in-laws and our friends and doctors and the parenting experts are simply not the relevant audience. If our kids love us and we have a good relationship as adults then we were good parents, case closed. (Which isn't to say that if they don't love us and we don't have a good relationship as adults that we were necessarily bad parents; there are outside factors that could influence this.)

Still, I'm not sure I want to accept the judgment of a four-year-old at face value, even if it was immensely grafitying and made me feel like a Rock-Star Mommy for at least several hours afterwards. (Further reinforced by an article in Scientific American Mind I read yesterday about how traumatic or positive experiences alter the expression of genes involved in emotional regulation. Apparently, physically affectionate mothering (fathering was not mentioned) actually assists the genes involved in stress and anxiety regulation to function more effectively, so if you give your kid a lot of hugs and tell them you love them all the time, give yourself a pat on the back. I might blog this article later.) Like most mothers, I spend more time feeling badly about all of the things I'm not doing than feeling great about the things that my daughter obviously thinks that I am doing.

Like letting her play by herself so long as she's not asking for me. Oh, we've raised the practice of benign neglect to a high art at our house; I tell myself it's a step up from Malignant Neglect, the kind where kids don't get shoes or coats or food or any sort of positive attention or feedback, then I mostly go back to reading or writing. I love my daughter, she is my favourite person on earth and the best thing that ever happened to me, I am dreading our summer schedule when she will be at her father's half the time; it still happens that I hate playing with her Calico Critters and manufacturing the super-squeaky Mommy Toy voice that says "I love you!" fifty gazillion times in a row while jumping up and down and rescuing baby toys who somehow managed to get on the roof of the dollhouse again, and I hate making the baby lion jump up and down for five minutes, and I hate making all of the Little People into cast members from Shrek the Third. I do it when she asks me to, but when she doesn't ask, I don't do it. I give myself all kinds of reasons to believe it's good for her too (it gives her privacy! helps her foster her imagination! allows her to develop independence!) but the truth is, I do it for me, as evidenced by the sinking feeling of dread I experience whenever she does say, "I don't want to play by myself now. I want a friend to play with me. Won't you play with me?"

Oh, god. If I have to. You want me to be the Mommy Dalmation? We're going to take her clothes off again? And put them on again? And take them off again? Can't we just leave them on?

Bea's post yesterday about Benign Neglect in kiddie lit and how it is, of course, adults writing about how great benign neglect is for kids, and whether it's really great for the kids or if we just want to think it is because it lets us off the never-ending entertainment hook, touched a nerve in the comments section. Evidently, it touched mine; even when Frances brags about me to her friends, I still feel guilty about exactly how much time she plays on her own, and how much I dislike playing the kinds of games she likes to play, and how much I would rather it if she enjoyed being silently curled up on the couch with a good book or engaged in some little low-mess crafty project. Like me.

On the way home from school yesterday we passed C on her way to a party. "I want to go to the party!" said Frances.

"We weren't invited, sweetie," I said. "I'm sorry."

"But I want to be invited!"

"I know, but we weren't. It's hard to be left out, isn't it?"

"Yes! I want to be invited! I want to go to the party!" (This isn't a girl shy about expressing her wants, let me tell you.)

"Honeybun, I don't even know where the party is. I don't know whose party it is. I don't know when it's starting."

"But I want you to know where the party is! I want to go to the party!"

Ah, the Omniscient Mother. If only. I knew what to do! I'd be supermom! "Sweetie, I'm sorry, but you can't go to that party. I know it's disappointing. But if you'd like, we could have a Mummy and Frances party."

"Ok."

"What do you think we should do at our Mummy and Frances party?"

"Cake."

"Ok. I have a little cake in the freezer, we can have that. What else should we do?"

"Macaroni and cheese!"

"Sure, you can have some leftover macaroni and cheese for supper. But what would you like to do?"

"Umm...raspberries!"

"That's fine. But besides eating. What would you like to do?"

"A drink?"

This was going to be a dinner party, I could tell. Macaroni and cheese and a bowl full of raspberries, and then when that wasn't enough a bit of leftover spaghetti with homemade sauce, and then a cake. Four candles in the top ("Mummy, you have to put fire on it") that she blew out, and then we shared a little cake before her Daddy called.

While she ate and I waited for my dinner to heat up, do you know what I did? I read a few pages from a book, ironically, about how to use creativity to boost family closeness and the happiness of children. Benign neglect + hyperparenting = a winning combination every time.

I'm not sure mothers can ever do enough to silence the critical voices in our heads, voices that come mostly from media and experts and family. We had a Mummy and Frances party and I spent part of it ignoring Frances to read a parenting manual.

I snapped out of it and we talked, instead, until she asked to watch a few minutes of Bambi before bed, when I went back to my book.

On balance, who knows. Ask Frances when she's 22. In the meantime, I'm really hoping this new parenting manual will give me some ideas of things my daughter and I can do together that don't make me feel like my brain is dribbling out of my ears. Gardening, maybe. Simple crafts. Frances wants to help me paint the living room red. She has not yet convinced me.

Posted by Andrea at 10:29 AM | Comments (9)

Next time you're about to give yourself the World's Worst Mother Award, remember this

I had a different post planned for today, but I posted several months ago about the baby who was abandoned in a parking-garage stairwell here in Toronto; she was assumed to be eight months old, and named Angelica-Leslie by CAS workers after several days had passed with no clues coming forward about who she is. I thought that those of you who don't live in the area and so would not otherwise hear the end of the story might appreciate knowing that two people have been arrested in connection with her abandonment.

Her parents.

Left her in a freezing stairwell in a parking garage like a used kleenex or an empty candy wrapper.

I don't want to imagine what it's going to do to her to know that her parents thought so little of her, but I do.

Posted by Andrea at 9:57 AM | Comments (5)

Break My Stride

Julie's topic for the Hump Day Hmm this week is walking out of stride.

I've mentioned, oh, about five thousand times (in my 1342 entries), that I've wanted to be a writer since I was five years old. I've blamed the diabetes for not going after it approximately 4,993 times. But the more I think about this lately, the more I realize--it's not true.

There are type 1 diabetic writers out there. I read their books. They even freelance. They are not dying of complications at horrendously young ages nor finding themselves lapsed into comas every morning over their breakfast cereal. So where did I get the idea that this limitation applied to me?

I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you: from my Mom. On the one and only occasion that I can recall her saying, "If you try to be a writer, you will end up a waitress."

We could spend all day unpacking the various value statements in that sentence (Oh my god, a waitress! Then how will I ever afford that big suburban house and all the fixings that will give my life meaning?), and at times I have, but translated it roughly means: "If you try to write you will fail and end up poor."

My mother and I have a complicated relationship and at times we have not gotten along, but I know that when she said that (and probably forgot it in about five minutes, telling herself it was a momentary unkindness that was outweighed by the blah blah blah, all the stuff we all tell ourselves all the time when we say something to our kids that we regret), she was not trying to hurt me. She was trying to help me. She was trying to protect me from failure and poverty. She was telling me not to run too fast, or I'd hurt myself. She was trying to help me live within what she perceived as my limitations.

After all, how many people try to become writers, and fail? How many writers are poor? There aren't a whole lot of superstars in writing, and the ones who run with the pack are notoriously underpaid and, I'd imagine, stressed about it.

I've been told by teachers that I can write since I was a little kid. I had a highschool teacher threaten to track me down and beat me if I didn't take english at university (thankfully she did not make good on her threat) and my undergrad thesis advisor (who also taught journalism) said I was the best writer he'd ever taught in fifteen years at the school. Friends have always said I could write; enemies have occasionally accused me of plagiarism.

But I didn't pay any attention to them. I already knew that if I tried to be a writer, I'd end up a waitress. The commentary of a single mother apparently outweighs that of several supposedly-objective experts.

Here's what I'm not claiming:

I'm not claiming that I would have ended up a superstar. That's an arbitrary and unpredictable process that depends too much on luck and too little on effort or skill. (I still remember an essay submitted by one of my classmates that a first-year teaching assistant picked to read to the class; it was a collection of body shop t-shirt slogans typed up and submitted as original work. I was horrified by her bad taste.) I'm not claiming I would have made as much money as I do now. I'm not saying I would have been a household name. It's possible that the 1/15 year environmental studies student is an average writer so far as professional writers are concerned, I don't know.

What I am claiming is that I could have been a writer.

Possibly an average, middle-of-the-pack writer. Possibly not.

But I never even let myself try because of one casual offhand remark my mother made when I was a teenager that convinced me that if I tried, I would fail, I would end up poor, and then (the extrapolation supplied by myself) I would not be able to pay for my insulin or test strips and would end up dying of starvation, possibly in a gutter.

Even though I know better. There are plenty of writers who pay the bills from their writing. Mostly not novelists and poets, but writers nonetheless. Some of them are even diabetics. And, you know, in the midst of all this being a not-writer who does something Practical and Applied (and Altruistic/Helpful) for a living, I'm writing a novel, a few essays, two blogs--I did the mature, realistic thing and found work that was "safe" only to discover, fourteen years in, that I have not only been walking out of stride with myself all along but that it's been a strange, lurching, awkward kind of walking-out-of-stride-with-myself because I can't manage not-writing. I still write, compulsively and constantly.

There's worse:

See, the person I am currently dating is unconventionally employed and spends lots of time working (for money) on various art projects, and while I found this very cool for the first few dates it also terrified me. An artist! You can't be an artist! If you try to be an artist, you'll end up a waitress!

Oh, oops, wait a second: that's not me thinking about the boyfriend. That's my Mom talking about me. In my head. But you know for a few days there it felt like me. Thank goodness I figured out it wasn't.

I think this happens a lot. I think a lot of the seemingly-objective, supposedly-reality-based value statements and judgements we make about the people we care about are actually echoes of the voices of influential people in our own lives talking about us. For all I know that statement my Mom made so long ago was a reflection of something her parents had said to her (I already know they told her that girls can't go to college).

Just because it feels like an objective, reality-based, loving assessment of our children does not mean it is accurate.

I think this is very important.

The value judgements of our parents especially can feel like received wisdom that we question late, if ever. Then it gets pasted all over the world around us whether it's appropriate or not, including our kids, who will take it as received widom in their turn and spend their lives trying to match their stride to our own hobbled gaits, not knowing that we ourselves are stumbling along with our ankles tied together.

I don't think there's any way around it: we have to untie our own ankles before we can begin to help our children find their strides, or even avoid constraining them ourselves. They'll tie that rope around their own legs to emulate our example; and then thirty years from now we'll all wonder why our kids never reached their potential, just as we never reached ours.

Posted by Andrea at 9:03 AM | Comments (25)

Tag, I'm It

The lovely Chris over at Mombie tagged me with a meme that (I think) she invented for Mother's Day; and you know me and memes, but I think this one is special. The instructions are simple: what are three things you do well as a mother? Unfortunately I'm sick today (who gets a flu in May?) so it's a challenge to corral my thoughts in a positive direction. Which probably means it's even more necessary. Here we go:

1. Not hovering. Frances plays outside by herself now that the weather is nice; she's been told to stay where I can see her and I pop out occasionally to make sure she's ok, but I figure if she wants to sit in the back yard area and play with a stick in the mud, that's great.

2. Pretending to be stupid. You know what I mean: when they hide somewhere you can totally see them, or put the surprise in the same hand and ask you to guess where it is again, or play a silly word game where they are obviously trying to trick you. "Hmm, where could Frances be? I could have sworn she was here just a minute ago.... I'll be so sad if I've lost her forever. Oh no! I can't find her anywhere!" All the while with gales of laughter escaping from behind the curtain, just above a pair of small white socks and two little pink shins.

3. TV. Most of the week will go by almost entirely TV-free. (Until she becomes fascinated with a new movie and wants to watch it all the time, but that does mean that when this happens I don't feel particularly bad about it--averaged out it's still Not Much.) Yet somehow she has still figured out who the Bratz are. I blame her classmates.

Although she has still to figure out that she can ask me for a particular toy--she's completely not acquisitive.

I won't tag, but only because I can't narrow it down to just a few people I'd want to see tackle it. How's this: are you reading this post? Yes? You're tagged.

Posted by Andrea at 8:29 AM | Comments (5)

Truth in Mommyblogging

The other day, Frances asked me for a stepdad.

Before I go any further, let me be absolutely clear that Frances has no idea what a stepdad is or what having one would entail except that her friend C has a stepdad, so she wants one too. Still, it gave me pause. As you can imagine, as anyone would feel when their child asks them for something that they're not sure they're ever going to be able to give them.

Now when I say "the other day" I sort of mean "sometime last week or the week before, I can't remember exactly," and this is the kind of minor dishonesty that the blogosphere expects and condones. It's the "I'm doing the best that I can, this is an irrelevant detail" kind of dishonesty. The important part is that Frances asked me for a stepdad, and it stabbed me in the heart--a very minor stab, like a thorn--to hear her question and try to answer her.

There were two articles in newspapers yesterday that touched on blogging enterprises both motherhood and marital, and as I've run into most of the barricades related to either in the last few years, they hit. Well, let's see: Frances's photographs have been stolen and photoshopped, I've received death threats, I have a gag order in the separation agreement so censored, I've participated in panels on mommyblogging, done studies on it, had a few celebrity sightings, the whole gamut. I've seen the good, the bad, and the inhuman.

The first article was about--what else?--the ethics of mommyblogging. There were a lot of things that were potentially objectionable in this story--such as the belief that using "innocuous" tags protects photos of kids. Listen, the photo of Frances that was stolen and photoshopped and posted on fark had no tags and its name was numeric. It was not at all googleable. It was found anyway, on a blog that at the time had 100 readers a day. But this is what I want to discuss:

"Knowing that our mothers had a hard time and loved us anyway isn't the worst thing that can happen to this generation.

"But they may only believe that in their 20s. There may be some very angry adolescents along the way."

This is true, I think; our kids may benefit from knowing us as real people who struggled with parenting but loved them anyway. But I wonder why they need to read about it on the internet. There is no reason they can't hear this from our own lips at the appropriate time.

Frances, sweetie? I love you. I love you very, very much. I love you even when you're driving me crazy. I tell you this every day so hopefully you've figured it out by now. If not, well, here you go.

In any case, writing about parent-blogging as an enterprise that is primarily beneficial for the kids is self-serving dishonesty. We're doing it for ourselves, and crossing our fingers that it won't hurt the people we love most. Sort of like adding bisphenol A to baby bottles without being sure that it won't leach out, or lining kids' lunch bags with lead for insulation, or using vaccines that haven't been thoroughly tested.

We put our kids in carseats, feed them organic food, make them wear helmets on bicycles, give them no choking hazards before the age of three, limit their television viewing, slather them with sunblock and consult the advice of self-appointed experts on every issue from when to start school to how to deal with nightmares, all in the name of keeping our kids safe and protecting their physical and emotional health; then indulge in an experiment whose long-term effects on mental and emotional health are completely unknown.

Most of us are cognizant of this, I think; and the range of stances on the subject is broad as befits any community composed of diverse human beings with different agendas. But if you tell me that you never cringe when you find a blog that you think has crossed the line, I won't believe you.

What scares me, and keeps me even more cautious than I would otherwise be, is remembering how Madeleine L'engle was publicly attacked by her children after her death for her innaccurate representations of them and of their family in the novels that we all love so much--attacked, because those misrepresentations had lifelong consequences for her children. I am willing to believe that L'engle meant well and tried to be truthful. That didn't save her kids from the consequences of her writings. And that was fiction, good lord; we're writing (or claiming to write) memoir.

Frances asked me for a stepdad not long ago; and then I told you that she didn't really mean it. But the fact is, I don't know. I can't know. And then I told you anyway. One day, that may hurt my little girl, even if I am being careful and trying hard and love her more than anything. I see her as a sunny, impossibly good-natured, well-liked golden girl who handled the end of her family with resilience and optimism well beyond her years; she may remember this time as a horrific, painful, traumatizing mess when she felt she couldn't confide in anyone, for whatever reason. By then it will be too late because I've already told the world otherwise.

So, that's maternal.

Now marital, courtesy of the New York Times. Or, more accurately, post-marital.

Until the morning her husband, David Sals, told her he “was done” with their marriage, Jennifer Neal had portrayed him so lovingly on her blog that he was called DearSweetDave. By the afternoon of that October day last year, Ms. Neal had shared what she portrayed as his perfidy with the 55,000 regular readers she says visit NakedJencom.

Soon after, readers came to know him by a far less flattering name, and as the guy whose insensitivity made Jen so sick that she was throwing up every day and so poor that she lost her house in Santa Cruz, Calif.

And when a despairing Jen discovered in February that her ex-husband had put his information up on Match.com, an Internet dating service, she linked to it from her blog, giving her readers a chance to share their thoughts.

I can't tell you I haven't been tempted to follow suit. Very tempted. There is that gag order, though; and even before I tried to be circumspect. However--isn't that the way it goes? Depictions of marriage that are cloyingly sweet and utterly false until the whole thing goes cock-eyed, them bam! and there's ugliness lying bloody and ragged all over the internet.

I wonder--and don't you?--why husbands and partners get that consideration, and our kids don't. If we don't expose our husbands etc. to that form of public scrutiny because we know they won't like it and we don't want to hurt them or harm that relationship, why do we think our kids are going to be ok with it?

We know we can't blog about our colleagues, we agonize about blogging about parents and siblings, yet we post photos of our kids in the bath. Why?

Is it because, despite what we say, we really view these little creatures as our own (until they begin telling us otherwise)?

Is it because we don't want to claim ambition and fame for ourselves, for our own stories? It's easier to say "look at my great kid!" than it is to say "look at me!"

Is it because our children are too young to complain about violating their privacy? Is it because at this age they wouldn't mind because they still don't understand what privacy is?

Whatever it is, it seems that we extend the least consideration to the people we say we love most.

Motherhood is a subject worthy of honest exploration. I'd be the first to defend that. But I think a few things are missing from this venture:

1. We need to be honest about the fact that we don't know what our kids are going to think about this or how it is going to affect them, and not blithefly affect a public stance of "I'm sure it won't cause any lasting damage" that is based essentially on wishful thinking. We need to be ready to apologize or make reparation if in fact it does hurt them in some way, down the road.

2. We need to be aware that the best memoirs and the best personal reporting does not happen immediately--it is told with great reflection, sometimes years after the fact. Our stories of motherhood and our exploration of motherhood may actually suffer in honesty from being too immediate.

3. I think we need to strive for greater consistency. If our spouses, siblings, parents and colleagues deserve not to be laid open on the blogosphere for the entertainment of our friends, then so do our kids.

I recognize this is a bit of a different stance than I've taken previously on the privacy issue, and it's true that our kids' generation may well find that privacy is an outdated concept. But after thinking about it for a good long time and watching my daughter's growing capability to structure her own story and find meaning in it, I now believe that I need to give her the right to determine that for herself. My story is mine to share; she is a character in my story, and as such my experience of her is part of my story, and mine to share (though hopefully in a sensitive and tactful way); but her story, the meaning she finds in her own life, her inner world and experience, her feelings, her attitudes, her friendships and loves and longings and dreams? Not mine.

Anyway, I think it will be more fun to help her learn how to tell her own story.

~~~~~

(This post was a very loose interpretation of Julie's Hump Day Hmm topic for the week--truth and honesty.)

Posted by Andrea at 9:33 AM | Comments (15)

Because it's not the stuff you know you're doing that you need to worry about.

I don't remember ever playing with dolls. I must have, I had dolls, but I don't remember playing with them. It didn't register in the long-term memory ganglia or whatever neural part it is they reside in.

I had a cabbage patch doll. My Mom bought me one for Christmas the year they were all the rage--remember that? Parents trampling each other to buy one for their kids for Christmas?--and she bought it just before they took off, when there were plenty on the shelves, and watched in amazement as it became the It Toy of the year. Her name was Frederica and she had two fat brown braids, and my Mom made her an entire little wardrobe of Cabbage Patch Clothes so she would have outfits.

She made me another doll, too, that I named after the Little Matchstick Girl because we learned about her in school that year. She was long and thin and had long, straw-coloured yarn hair and a long blue print dress.

I had a little puppet baby doll that had a blanket sewn to her so that when you put your hand inside you could wrap the blanket around her and it would look like a baby, sleeping.

I had a dollhouse that my father made; the second floor was removable and it was vaguely patterned after my childhood home. It had doors and windows and white stucco paint on the outside, black sandpaper shingles; when I was a teenager I took to redecorating it as a hobby and it has a few nice pieces in it now. The house itself, though, is a shambles, because in my early twenties my pet ferret took up residence in it and could not be evicted.

I had Barbies. I know this because I have found their headless, limbless torsos, blond plastic hair knotted and ratty, at the bottom of toy bins.

I must have played with them in the regular fashion at some point; but the only games I remember playing with the Barbies were the ones where I paired them up with my brother's GI Joes and sent them off to battle evil and save the world.

I remember lego. I remember my brother's construx and his transformers. I remember constructing elaborate role-playing games complete with hand-drawn currency, rulebooks and manuals that centred, again, on battling evil and saving the world. I do not remember playing with dolls. My parents tell me I did, and treasured them. They have no reason to lie. But the doll-playing wasn't formative.

I didn't grow up believing that I had to be a mother.

I did grow up believing that I had to save the world.

~~~~~

My bedroom in the new house was blue, sky-blue, and it had one of those wallpaper murals on one wall. I think it was a rainbow. Girly, but not pink. My brother's room was painted grey and black and his mural was a moonscape. Cool, but I had the same aversion to black as a decorating scheme at that age as I do now.

I had a microscope somewhere in there. It came with glass slides and solutions and tweezers and a little black scalpel.

My parents signed me up for jazz dance when I was little, I can't remember the age. I can remember wearing leotards and dance shoes, and learning to sashay. I took it until I was allowed to quit, sometime late in elementary school.

My parents signed my brother up for football. I can't remember the age. I can remember his yellow and black uniform. He took it until he was allowed to quit.

I can remember lots and lots of crafty projects from a young age. I had a toy singer sewing machine that really sewed, and knitting tubes that I used to make little round rugs for my dollhouse, and a sewing kit with a pattern for a tiny tiny felt teddy bear smaller than my thumb. I had an easybake oven and used up all the little mixes quick. I had books, of course; reams and reams of books. Narnia and Anne and tons ordered from Scholastic through the school.

I love making things, and I love knowing how to do things, now as then; this applies equally well to hanging shelves with a cordless drill, stripping and refinishing furniture, painting, as well as baking, sewing, knitting, etc. But I'll let you guess which were sitting under the tree at Christmas.

I'm not saying I didn't ask for these things (except the dance lessons). Maybe I did. But who (knowing the adult I turned into) could argue this was innate?

~~~~~

I remember having two favourite colours in elementary school: red and blue.

I remember loving Anne and Narnia and all the rest of my childhood library, until I discovered my father's science fiction and fantasy books in senior public school. And even though The Coming of the Quantum Cats opened up a whole other universe to me, I dropped science after grade 10 and I don't remember anyone complaining.

Now I read astrophysics for fun.

Now, according to my job classification, I am a professional scientist.

~~~~~

When I visited my parents over the holidays the conversation turned to one of our favourite topics of conversation: Frances. How adorable, how sweet, how loving, how kind, how active, how bright, how thoughtful, how funny. How generally perfect.

Also--how girly.

How she loves to play with dolls (this is brought out as evidence of girlishness, but her love of lego is not).

How caring and nurturing she is of all her little toys.

How she loves pink. How she adores to be beautiful in her party clothes. How she thrives on being admired in her party shoes.

Not how she loves to try to scare people with tales of the bloodthirsty T Rex.

Not how she, too, structures so much of her roleplaying games around saving people or animals.

But there it was, that conversation. Frances is such a little girl.

"Just like you," said my Dad.

(I'll let those of you who've fainted wake up before I continue. Take your time.)

"We tried to raise you gender-neutrally, but you just always wanted dolls and your brother wanted trucks."

All I could do was stare.

~~~~~

It's not the stuff you know you're doing that you need to watch out for.

It's the stuff you don't know you're doing, the stuff you would swear you weren't doing but are doing anyway, because you can't help it, it's unconscious.

I don't think my dad is unusually clueless. I think he's normal. Most of you probably have similar tales about your own parents.

Our kids will have the same stories to tell about us one day. One day, Frances will be telling her friends how I practically programmed her to love pink and baking and never take the driver's seat when she can avoid it.

I hope, when it happens, that I'm not sitting around telling my friends about how hard I tried to be gender-neutral in parenting Frances, but she loved dolls and pink anyway, I guess that stuff is just innate.

Posted by Andrea at 7:10 AM | Comments (6)

Moral Dilemmas II: where I answer my own rhetorical questions, or start to

Him: What do you think about dating more than one person at a time?

Me: I think it's fine, so long as everyone is being honest and knows what is going on.

Thinking: And even then...

When do you owe someone that honesty?

While before the first date is too much too soon, and after marriage is too little too late, there is a wide grey area in between where potential misunderstandings, hurt feelings and awkward conversations abound. This is probably why most people either a) avoid dating more than one person at a time or b) avoid having the conversations, thereby cheating by default.

But: is it the expectations that lie at the root of those misunderstandings and hurt feelings--that is, that people date one person at a time, and therefore only exceptions to this rule require communication--or the lack of honesty? If we expected people to be dating more than one person until hearing otherwise directly from them, how would that change?

~~~~~

Last week I read a column in the Globe and Mail titled The Other Woman, all about those poor sad dupes who believe the married guy loves them because he buys them lingerie.

Before I get to the part where I choked, I'd like to point out that any woman in any relationship who believes that a guy loves her because he buys her stuff, regardless of their official relationship status, is a poor sad dupe. This is not an affliction that holds only for The Other Woman. All of us are in the position of attempting to judge someone else's intentions and honesty based on a combination of gifts, actions, words, looks, consistency, and so on; none of us will ever fully penetrate or understand the heart of another.

Here are the choking hazards:

It's true there are women who profess not to care if their man leaves his wife.

...aha, but they are miserable, self-deluded wretches, engaged in a pathetic pretense. Deep down all women want the diamond ring and the white-picket fence. We have chosen to disregard what the women have to say about themselves, and will shortly share with you instead the musings of a group of self-proclaimed 'experts' who have not a shred of evidence among them.

But I would suggest that's an unhealthy display of defensiveness and self-degradation, and it points to the problem that many psychologists say underlies the reason single women settle for a part-time man. It's that old bugaboo: low self-esteem.

...because there's no such thing as a psychologically healthy woman who doesn't want to be married or partnered, would rather have several casual relationships over one serious one, enjoys being single or has tried marriage and didn't like it. Since we can't find a mental illness common to all women sleeping with married men which can be treated pharmaceutically (pity, it's so much more profitable), we'll just shame them all into silence or compliance by telling them it's their low self-esteem.

Here's one way to see things clearly. Think of yourself as a Ferrari in a garage that you are offering to him to use any time he wants. You fill it up with gas. You keep it clean, finely detailed for his pleasure.

...because clear thinking in relationships always involves objectifying yourself and seeing yourself primarily as a man's ticket to orgasm. This, by the way, also defines high self-esteem (see above).

The best advice, however, is the pre-emptive kind. Channel Barbara Amiel: When she was between husband No. 3 (David Graham) and husband No. 4 (Conrad Black), she was in London, moving among the great and the good. There were plenty of men, but she knew what she wanted and what she deserved.

...because Conrad Black may be a felon, but he's a rich felon and he was all hers. Good thinking, Barbara!

Ready for more? Let's read a few comments.

On second thought, I'll let you read the comments. Except for this one: "Here's one thing I know to be true: Cheaters cheat. It's what they do."

Too true. Scientifically proven. DNA studies have in fact found that these types are a separate sub-species, the Homo Sapiens Infidelus.

I have been both the jezebel and the frigid bitch. I was the same person both times. Wasn't I?

My self-esteem was not sky-high the one time and rock-bottom the other. Being the jezebel, if anything, reduced my sense of myself because what the hell was I doing? Why was I doing this? A scenario that strikes me as more likely (if you believe women are people) than a wilting wallflower waiting for a married man to make her feel complete. My ethics and morals were not substantially different. I was the same person--not, in either case, wholly innocent; not, in either case, wholly to blame; in both cases the same mix of insecurities and strengths, blind spots and clear thinking, wishes and fears, smarts and stupids that I am on most other days. I was me.

Anyone can become at any time the person they are sure they will never be, doing the thing they are sure they will never do. What sort of hubris allows one to think they are exempt from human failings? At the very least any woman who's ever been through the first year of motherhood, when all of our precious notions of what sort of mothers we can be and will be crumble into a haze of sleep-deprivation and expert-laden guilt, ought to know better. She ought to know that all of us are capable of failing those we love most on earth simply because we are sometimes not the people we thought we were or wanted to be.

Most of the science I've read on the issue of infidelity concludes that both men and women are not lifelong monogamous pair-bonders, but opportunistic adulterers. That is, we will remain faithful so long as we are convinced that this is our best deal (in a modern society, factoring in the cost of divorce, the impact on children, and so on); but once we are presented with something we think is a better deal, we'll take what we can get, for as long as we can get away with it.

It's not a flattering portrait of human nature; but then, science can also explain most of our altruistic and nurturing behaviours including within our immediate families through mathematical formulas based on ratios of genetic relatedness. It feels noble, spiritual, pure, high-minded, and it's not.

From the gutters of humanity's primate nature (ask any female chimp how many males she fucked per offspring and, if she were human, she'd give you a wicked little laugh) to the heights of romantic idealism in the next installment, since this one is getting long enough, don't you think?

Posted by Andrea at 9:03 AM | Comments (4)

Apocalypse for One

Out of the nineteen photos of Frances on my desk at work, three show her around eight to ten months of age.

In one of them, from October that year, she is sitting facing Lake Ontario in a park, wearing orange corduroy pants and a white onesie with flowers embroidered around the neck. Her blond hair is shining in the Indian-summer sun and the grass is as green as green gets, the lake a calmer and darker version of the summer-blue sky. She is holding her arms out to either side for balance; in the moment after the picture was taken, she had fallen over backwards and bumped her head on the ground, and started to cry.

In the second, she is in one of those bucket-style baby swings at a parkette, very clearly much too small for it (with the top digging into her armpits) except for the grin on her face, chubby little legs stuck straight out, hands clasped together. I remember, as she rode that day, her legs kicking, so unable was she to contain her excitement.

In the third, also from October when we visited relatives in Montreal for Thanksgiving, she is being held by her Auntie. Her hair pokes out from underneath the hood of a burgundy velour jacket with "cutie" spelled out in buttons on the front. This is one of my favourite pictures of her, ever, her eyes crinkled and her cheeks round with the huge grin on her face. There never has been a smilier smile. That gleeful face still makes me happy.

This face should look the same.

I can't even tell you who she is, because nobody knows. Well, someone must know, but they're not telling.

I look at Frances in my photo, face all stretched out with smiling, and wonder what would have had to happen to her to put that despair in her eyes. It doesn't bear thinking of, but I can't help thinking of it. I look at that nameless, joyless little face, and imagine her wearing the same grin, secure in the midst of a tribe of adults who adore her. So secure she never considers it; it's her birthright, as constant and consistent as air. I imagine her kicking her feet for joy in a baby bucket swing, precariously balancing on the soft grass in the sun of an Indian summer day. I imagine Frances lying face-down and bleeding in a cold stairwell for two hours, knowing that no one is coming back, and so filled with despair that she doesn't even cry.

I hate to think that my little girl is fortunate simply for being loved and cared for, coddled and cosseted, with parents who celebrate her triumphs and are there with a cuddle and kiss when she needs to be unwedged from the toilet seat or has bonked her head on the ground. I hate to think she is lucky for the white onesie with the flowers embroidered on the neck, the red velour hoodie, the bucket swing. It ought to be a birthright. These blank eyes should never exist in a baby's face.

But there they are. And if we can't even get this right, what good are we?

Posted by Andrea at 10:49 AM | Comments (20)

A Near Miss

Frances does not go over to play at C's house as often as she would like, for various logistical reasons, the most important of which to date has been the toilet. Specifically, their bathroom is not equipped for a person of such small stature to use it on their own (and why should it be?), and I don't know who would help her in my absence. There was, on one of their earliest playdates, an Incident; and it caused Frances great shame and embarassment, so since that time the rule has been that she can go to play for an hour, after she uses our bathroom, and then I go pick her up, because that's about as long as I can count on her bladder lasting. Which is fine; she's my kid, it's my job.

But. Over the holidays, C was pet-sitting her aunt's pomeranian, a round furball that looked more like a stuffed toy than a pet and, as you can imagine, Frances was entranced. I let her go over to play and started the laundry, counting myself lucky to have some unforeseen free time to do it in. As I've mentioned before my apartment does not have in-suite laundry but the laundry room is right across the hall from my upstairs door, so except for its hours (8 am to 10 pm daily) there is no inconvenience.

A couple from Russia (there are many, many Russian immigrants in this apartment complex) was doing their laundry at the same time; the man turned to me and says, "Is that your baby?" I look out and, indeed, there are Frances's face and hands pressed to the glass door separating our block from C's--this glass door is right outside C's upstairs door, so she can't have been there for more than a moment. I grab my laundry room keys and open the door for her; "Why aren't you playing at C's?"

"I had something very important to tell you," she says.

We go into our apartment. "Oh? What was that?"

"C likes her dog a lot. It is a very cute doggie. It kissed me! Kisses are nice." (We'd had the dog and C over for a bit before Frances went to her house, and Frances walked the dog--small enough for Frances to walk on a leash--around the ground floor. When the dog stopped to lick Frances's fingers, she looked positively ecstatic. "He kissed me!" she said, voice full of wonder, and held her fingers out in front to contemplate them. Her first boyfriend (or girlfriend) is going to be hard-pressed to top that reaction.)

"That's true, I can see that."

"Maybe someday I can get a doggie."

My lips twitch. Earlier that very day, on hearing about this situation, a friend of mine had predicted that this request would be forthcoming. He was right. "Maybe someday. When you're a little older."

"OK."

"Are you done at C's?"

"No, I told her I was coming back."

"OK. I'll walk you back there."

I do this--two doors down in the upstairs hallway, and thank the gods for that hallway in wintertime. Only be for long enough to finish the laundry--to get everything out of the dryer and back into the apartment, and then I will go get her. But before the laundry clock is up there is a heavy knock on the upstairs door. I expect it to be C, or maybe C's grandmother (her mother is working) with Frances, and so open it with a smile.

It is not C, nor is it C's grandmother. It is the newest apartment complex superintendant or whatever she is, she helps out in the rental office and I've met her once or twice. She is tall, very slim, with long blond hair of exactly the shade you imagine when you hear "blond"; very pretty, in a Cover Girl cosmetics way. One can imagine the faux-Manhattan skyline behind her in a print advertisement exhorting one to buy their newest mascara or lipstick, with a wholesome toothy smile on her face. Beside her is Frances.

"Frances!" I say. "Why aren't you playing at C's?"

"Well I was," she say. "And then I wanted to tell you something."

"OK. Come in." I don't know what I am feeling. Missed dread, maybe. The joint revelation that something very bad could have happened; but it didn't, because there she is, wanting to tell me something. The new superintendant-or-whatever stares at me, obviously expecting some greater reaction. "A man found her," she says, "wandering around in the L block. He called me."

"Thank you."

Frances comes in past my legs. "I wanted to tell you, Mummy. I have something to tell you."

"Just a second." My heart is beating fast. This woman is expecting something from me; it's clear on her face that she thinks I'm a terrible mother right now, from whatever response it is I am lacking. I should be effusive? But she's fine, isn't she? Standing by my legs, wanting to tell me something. I should be relieved? Was I supposed to think she was missing? But she was playing at a friend's, and I thought she was supervised.

"You forgot your camera again." A stupid thing to say. "Why--why aren't you still at C's?"

"I left."

"Clearly."

I should be afraid? But she's fine, she's right here. I should be apologetic? But she was playing at a friend's! She shouldn't have been playing at a friend's, maybe? Am I supposed to feel caught out, guilty? Because she looks only two, I should have been there with her, supervising her myself?

Once when I took her to the Zoo, and brought her into the kid's area where there is a big treehouse with a big slide, and I walked her to the top of the slide and then taken the stroller to meet her at the bottom, she went missing. I stood there and she did not emerge, although other children did. Checked the top again--not there. Checked the bottom--not there. Checked the top and the bottom again--not there. How does a child go missing between the top and the bottom of an enclosed slide in a play structure? I checked the entire kid zoo, every exhibit, imagining myself explaining to her father that somehow I had lost Frances at the zoo, somewhere between the top and the bottom of the slide. Frances was nowhere. How could she be nowhere? I checked the top and bottom of the slide again; growing frantic. Where could she be? She had to be somewhere. I approached a few strangers and asked them, have you seen a girl about this big, blond hair, glasses, wearing an orange t-shirt? No, they all said. I ran around again, checking every exhibit, and coming around a corner saw a cluster of adults gathered around a child. "Where's your Mommy?" one of them asked.

"Frances!" The crowd parted and I hugged her. "Where were you? Where did you go?" The terror broke and I cried; I'd been so worried and now there she was and now I was crying.

"She was at the bottom of the slide," one of the strange adults said.

"I waited for you and you didn't come," said Frances, crying too.

I said nothing. I couldn't speak, in any case. I just hugged her. And I remembered (and maybe you do too) all the times when I was a small child shopping with my mother, following her boots or shoes around the mall, and looking up to realize that it wasn't my mother after all I'd been following, and trying to find her, and failing, and wondering if I would never be found again, and maybe I would have to live somehow in the shopping centre, maybe sleeping on the mattresses in the department store and eating the free samples in the supermarket; until I was found. I'd never before understood the violence of my mother's reaction when she found me. "I was worried sick," I finally said.

This was different. I'd only found out she was missing in the very instant she'd been found, both halves of the dramatic tale presented in the denouement. Yet this very pretty woman expected the traditional conclusion, me clutching Frances to my breast and telling her I was worried sick.

What I am, at that moment, is furious--she was at a friend's, she was supposed to be supervised, she was not supposed to be sent to walk home on her own--she can't open those big glass doors separating blocks so how she got all the way down to L is a mystery, someone else must have opened all of them for her--and if she walked out of C's house on her own someone should have come to tell me. The first time--she wandered out the upstairs door and no one had time to notice, maybe, and were waiting for her to come straight back in; but two times in an hour? I can't show that to this beautiful girl with her own two daughters at home who clearly, clearly, is thinking I am not right in the head right then. But I am furious. I want to know why my little girl was wandering around L block by herself, when I thought she was safe at her friend's. I want to know why no one walked her down the two doors to find her house, when she is only four for god's sake, and just learning to read; I want to know why no one made sure she got home safely. I do that when C comes to play at my house and C is eight. And I know C's family is Russian and (from Ponderosa Jennifer) that Russian culture is a little different when it comes to child-rearing and C's grandmother successfully reared children there presumably with much less supervision than I have come to believe is necessary. However. None of this is helping, in that moment.

"Thank you," I say again to the superintendant-or-whatever. With the shock still rigid on her face, she walks away, and I close the door.

I am still furious. Furious at them, or myself? Not sure at that point. Why did I walk her back over? Why didn't I ask why she'd been allowed to come out into the hallway by herself? Why did I assume it was a fluke and they knew better? Why didn't they look at that glass door separating our blocks and realize she could not possibly open it for herself? But the fury is certainly not Frances's, who can't be expected to know better, so I calmly sit down and let her tell me this very important thing she needed to say.

"The doggie is so cute, Mummy. C really loves her. It is really C's doggie, not her aunt's. I would really like a doggie, Mummy."

"Maybe someday," I say again. "When you're older."

I imagine going down the hall to bang on their door and demand an explanation; but C is a child, and C's mother is at work, and C's grandmother's english is poor. It would not be a fruitful conversation. It would lead to bruised feelings without hope of resolution and possibly a rupture of Frances's one friendship in our apartment block. And after all, isn't everything fine? Isn't Frances at that very moment asking me for a pet doggie? C is a good kid; it's just that she's a kid. She can't be expected to be responsible for Frances's welfare.

I'll have to speak to her mother, I think, dreading it already. Lord, the potential pitfalls in such a conversation--the potential for misunderstanding and self-righteousness and hurt. But she speaks english and she's an adult and I know her fairly well by now, so C's mother it will have to be, even though she wasn't even there. Because it's clear to me that the one thing I can no longer do is allow Frances to go to play at C's house, not even for an hour. Not until I can be sure that someone will make sure she gets home safely if she decides she wants to leave.

Posted by Andrea at 7:36 AM | Comments (11)

Wanted: Confidence

Parents have a new weapon in the battle to hush demands for $500 handbags and $250 jeans this Christmas: compliments.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that a child's need for material objects is tied to his or her self-esteem. The weaker their self-esteem, the greater their desire for the material trappings of adolescent popularity, according to the study published in the current issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

That's the good news, as reported in The Globe and Mail.

"This is the good news, Andrea?" Well, yes. Because it means there might be something you can do to curb the litany of 'I want I want I want': try to build your kids' self-esteem a little.

(By the way, while the study only looked at 8-9, 12-13 and 18-19 year olds, I would expect the same to hold true for any age group: if you are relatively comfortable with yourself as a person than you aren't going to want a lot of stuff to advertise to everyone else how cool you are. You don't need to. I'm not sure what age this would kick in but I am sure it's before eight. And I don't think it stops at 20.)

Here's the bad news:

"I'd always wanted to know why all of a sudden a child can hit 12 or 13 and become an absolute pester machine," said Dr. John, who has two former pre-teens of her own, now aged 17 and 21. "Well, it's because they have this low self-worth and they've figured out that they can use brands and possessions to signal certain things about themselves."

When Dr. John saw the correlation, she wanted to devise a surefire method of curbing that pre-teenage materialism. As a second part of their study, researchers discovered that propping up a child's self-esteem is as simple as giving them a well-earned compliment.

In the second study, she looked at 12-to-13-year-olds in summer camps and found that children who were given paper plates bearing compliments such as "smart" and "fun" immediately reined in their materialistic tendencies.

"It really surprised us to see how much a small compliment can make a difference," Dr. John said.

Which directly contradicts Carol Dweck's three decades of research, showing that giving your kids (or anyone) unearned compliments would reduce, not enhance, their self-esteem--which I tend to believe. Self-esteem is earned, it does not come pre-printed on a dessert plate. Although there may be some temporary effect in materialism, surely such a short-cut is not the best solution.

Dr. Ungar suggests including kids in holiday cooking and decorating as a way of propping up a child's self-esteem. "We have to offer them a way of asserting an identity," he said, "rather than buying one."

And see--that is spot on. Asserting an identity, rather than buying one (would probably work for preschoolers through geriatrics). And you assert an identity, of course, through what you do, not what you have. Sometimes you need to have stuff in order to be able to do stuff (hard to paint without brushes--or paint--or a surface), but a focus on the doing rather than the having would probably weed out a lot of extraneous and useless stuff.

It reminds me, too, of a study I read about several years back that found that people who spent their money on experiences (courses, vacations, etc.) rather than things were, on average, happier. Maybe they were happier because they were more satisfied with themselves and their lives, and therefore didn't need a lot of things to fill them up.

In the meantime, it gives me an excuse for an almost-certainly unjustified pat on the back, after all I could coax Frances to ask Santa for Christmas was a little yellow duckie.

Not sure what it means that I can't walk into a bookstore without walking out with something.

Posted by Andrea at 9:26 AM | Comments (6)

Going

Tuesday morning we walked to school because I wanted to take the subway to work. Frances decided to run; inevitably, she tripped hard and skinned both her knees. I had no kleenex in my purse (bad mother) and only one bandaid, and that for blisters (extra bad mother), but we cleaned her up and kissed her owwies better and continued on our way, more carefully, the small soft fingers of her right hand wrapped around my left index finger. As warm and soft as a cat's belly. I hope I remember it always, the feeling of her tiny trusting hand, the sheer pleasure of it, even if constraining my steps to her gait does feel like tripping over my feet constantly. I walked her into her classroom, and while I hung up her lunch bag she walked fearless up to a table of larger kids and asked to be included in their game. I kissed her hair and walked out--she did not even notice my leaving--and as I walked back down the hallway again, I smiled at the tempera paintings already lining the hallway (still lifes of purple flowers in a vase, childrens' families, colour wheels), and peeked through the open door of her junior kindergarten classroom. This afternoon she will sit there in a circle with her friends and learn about letters and numbers from her teacher. One day soon she will know how to read.

What hits hardest about parenting, in my experience, is how joy and loss, pride and grief, are mingled in every moment of it. Every one of their accomplishments is another step on a road that leads them away from you. We want them to be successful, we want them to grow and to learn, but oh how much we also want them to need us, to come to us when they are frightened, to put their small warm hands in ours.

One day when Frances was an infant, I decided to plop her on her tummy on the big bed for some photos. Every time I put her on her tummy, she'd stick her butt in the air, and it was so cute and funny, I wanted to remember it. She lay there, squawking and hollering and crying (but as every good mother knows, they need tummy time, so I didn't feel too guilty), writhing in helplessness, until--shift--over she rolled. I was so taken by surprise, I didn't even get a picture of the significant moment, but sat there staring until I thought, "She just rolled over. I should take a picture." Then I put her back on her tummy, and she did it again, and I took some more pictures. I was thrilled, of course. (She rolled over! No baby has ever rolled over that way before!) I was proud. I wanted to show everyone. I can't remember if I knew then, if I saw, that the first roll would become the first creep would become the first crawl, the first steps, the first jump, the first run, all leading inevitably to the moment when she has all her things packed into boxes and a moving van is in the driveway to take her away from me altogether. I can't remember if I knew, then, that every instance of her developing mastery and independence would be an instance of my loss of her.

I see it now. She comes in the door from daycare, sits down to take off her shoes and puts them by the front door. She asks for television. She plays with her friend C until it is time for supper. She climbs into her chair and drinks out of a regular cup, uses regular utensils to feed herself supper. She talks to Daddy on the phone, telling him what she did in daycare, and who her friends are, and how much she misses him. She picks out books at bedtime. She can recognize her name, written down. She can type it on the computer. Tomorrow morning she will pick out her own shirt and ask to wear her brown shoes with the flowers and decide she wants to wear the pink jacket and off we'll go. For ten hours she will be away from me, learning things, becoming bigger and smarter and stronger. Then one day, she won't pick a book at bedtime; instead, I'll come into her room that night to find her reading under the covers with a flashlight. One day, she will pick up the remote, pop a dvd in, and plop down on the couch with a handful of cookies that I specifically did not say she could eat this close to dinner. One day, she will open a free email account with some godawful handle and use it to write letters to her friends about how horrible I am. One day she will sneak out of the house to see a boy (or a girl). One day she will come home with clothes she bought with money from her own job. One day she will ask me for help with homework and I won't be able to. One day her beautiful little hands will stop making houses for the baby mole.

Everything she learns to do is a step she takes towards her true self and away from me. I was warned, you were warned, we were all warned. "Treasure every moment, it all goes by so fast." What we thought they meant was to find joy in the sleeplessness and vomit and screaming and exhaustion and tedious repetition of it all. We thought they were crazy. But that's not it. What they meant was to treasure their needing us, their belonging to us wholly, for the incredibly short time that it lasts. Already it's over. Frances is as much the world's as mine, and even more her own. It's right, it's good, and it's happening too damned fast.

~~~~~

(This is my contribution to Julie's "Hmm" for this week, reinterpreted from "A good thing going" to "A good thing, going.")

Posted by Andrea at 6:49 AM | Comments (11)

Happy Mother's Day

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

OK, so the last thing any of you need or want today are more meaningless platitudes. It's all I've got.

Happy Mother's Day. You are still all superheroes.

Posted by Andrea at 9:36 AM | Comments (8)

Self-Help: A Review of Mindset by Carol Dweck

Last Sunday I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book. You might guess that this is not a rare sight in my house.

It had been two hours since lunch, at which I had consumed an entire Laura Secord easter egg--the big ones--without bolusing properly. I'd guessed the dose, then looked at the grams of carbs on the box, and saw that I'd underdosed myself by two units. If I'd been on the pump that weekend, I would have just bolused another two units immediately, but it's an entirely different proposition when you have to stick yourself again. So I didn't.

And there I sat, two hours later, reading a book called Mindset. The blood sugar meter was on the table by my right hand. I looked at it. Should I test? Or shouldn't I? I knew it would be high. I knew I would fail.

~~~~~

Do you remember that Po Bronson article about how to praise kids properly making the rounds of the parentosphere a few weeks back? Some thought it was great, some thought it sucked, some thought it was a mite unrealistic to tell parents not to tell their kids how great they are. And then there were the some (like me) who didn't write about it at all, or even comment on sites where it was written about. And some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll provide the key quote from the article to ground the discussion:

"When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. ... The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.

"But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of 'smart' does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it."

I didn't write about it not because I thought it was unimportant, or untrue, or uninteresting. I didn't write about it because I think it's premature to talk about parenting before we talk about the parents.

I was labelled smart. Sure. It started before kindergarten, when (according to my parents) I taught myself how to read when I was three. In kindergarten, I was pressured to learn arithmetic so I could skip grade one (I refused). In grade 4, I was streamed into the "enhanced" class for smart kids, which necessitated a school change. I stayed in them until the end of highschool. And I've written about the detrimental impact of being told how smart you are on social integration (short version: being segregated sucks. Putting a bunch of kids in a room and telling everyone how SMART they are is a recipe for isolation and bullying). But I've never considered how the labelling affects the kids, or the adults we grew up to be. The intention was clearly to make us super-achievers who rule the world, instead of getting terminally bored and dropping out of school at fifteen.

Only it failed. On all counts. For one, we are not super-achievers in adulthood. We're very normal, very boring, mostly solid middle-class professional types. For another, while no one dropped out in highschool, so far as I know, several kids from my class flunked out--not dropped out, flunked out--of university. We're talking kids with IQs in the 140+ range. On the surface a textbook description of exactly the forces Bronson wrote about.

Penguin Unearthed wrote a post on this topic which links to a Stanford Magazine article that digs deeper into this research and its applicability in areas beyond parenting, and mentions her recent book: Mindset.

From the article: "...what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura ... and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. ... People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed."

I think if I'd been left alone, I would have ended up in the 'learning goals' camp. But I wasn't left alone; for ten years I was thoroughly tampered with in an educational system that made it its express mission to tell me every day how innately intelligent I was. No one ever taught us that we could be smarter if we worked at it: our intelligence was fixed. The point of our extra-special education was to enable us to reach the pinnacle of achievement pre-determined by our fixed level of innate intelligence. Umm...this didn't work.

But I'm a change junkie when it comes to personality. Every year I make an insane list of New Year's Resolutions, and every year I believe that if I work hard enough, I can do it. Every year I fail to work hard enough, but that doesn't stop me from trying, and I think if I didn't try then a lot of what I consider to be important about me today wouldn't exist.

Here's a graphical Dweck's model of the mindsets. I fall in both camps (you all know I can't ever pick one of anything).

Challenges? I LOVE challenges ... except in sports, and then I will avoid them at all costs. Persisting in the face of setbacks is my middle name when it comes to changes to my living situation, but when it comes to my career, it's time to pack it in and go home. Or how about seeing effort as the path to mastery? For writing? Absolutely. For art? Forget it; I have no talent.

"But what if you’re raised with a fixed mind-set about physics—or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set itself.

"The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades; students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the other interventions."

I was on page 62 of the book (quotes so far are all from the article) when I sat at the table and stared at the glucose meter and thought: a fixed mindset could take years off my life. If I see these tests as something that tells me whether I've been bad or good, succeeded or failed, deserve to live or die, then of course I won't test. The stakes are too high. But if I see it as something that will allow me to improve in the future, I will.

Has anyone ever told me that I'm a bad diabetic?

No. Quite the opposite. I've always been a "good" diabetic, a "well-controlled" diabetic, who passed her tests with flying colours. I've always received a smile and a virtual pat on the hand from the diabetes professionals I've dealt with. Yet somehow I still learned that everything was on the line at every test. This is exactly what Dweck found in her work on intelligence and achievement:

"We praised some of the students for their ability .... We praised others for their effort. ... Both groups were exactly equal to begin with. But right after the praise, they began to differ. As we feared, the ability praise pushed students straight into the fixed mindset. When offered a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. ... In contrast, when students were praised for their effort, ninety percent of them wanted the challenging new task.... Then we gave students some hard new problems, which they didn't do so well on. The ability kids now thought they were not smart after all. ... After the experience with difficulty, the performance of the ability-praised students plummeted, even when we gave them some more of the easier problems. Losing faith in their ability, they were doing worse than when they started. The effort kids showed better and better performance...."

In other words, telling smart kids that they're smart makes them dumber. Telling them that they worked hard makes them smarter. So: telling a person with a chronic illness that they are a "good" sick person will make them a worse one--if you want them to learn good habits and improve, you have to praise their efforts. Which means saying, in essence, "Good for you! You tested!" And not interpreting the results as any sort of reflection on them or their effort--as all diabetics know, sometimes you can throw yourself into it heart and soul and not see good results.

Don't I wish more doctors knew this.

I was afraid, before I'd read it, that it would be one of those socially-blind, everyone-can-do-anything-if-they-put-their-mind-to-it books that ignores the realities of prejudice and bigotry and the very real impediments to achievement that these systems can place in our paths. It wasn't. She acknowledges that stereotyping creates real barriers that cannot be overcome with effort; but then details how people with a growth or learning mindset are not as affected by stereotyping as people with fixed or ability mindsets. And she acknowledges that natural talent is also important--that some people can achieve more with the same level of effort; but the point isn't that everyone can be number one. It's that any one person will do better in any one endeavour with a growth mindset than with a fixed one.

For instance, most of you will have much, much better blood sugar numbers than I do, without effort. That's because you have a pancreas. I don't. That's your 'natural ability'; the point isn't that effort will ever give me the equivalent of a perfectly functioning pancreas. It won't. The point is that if I believe that testing is to learn and improve then I will be healthier and have better sugar numbers than if I believe that testing measures my discipline, motivation, or worth.

I read Po Bronson's article. I read it, and I tried it on. For a few days I tried to praise Frances in process ways, telling her what she did well instead of how brilliant she was; and you know something? It felt like an affectation, because it was an affectation. I couldn't talk to Frances that way because I can't talk to myself that way. I need to learn to talk to myself that way first, or at least at the same time, or that smart kid of mine is going to see right through me and learn the lesson my actions preach while my words tell her something else.

But let's step outside the rarified world of privileged families and consider the work done on this subject elsewhere. In the chapter on education, she describes a number of teachers who were assigned classes full of children labelled bullies, emotionally handicapped, mentally disturbed, learning disabled and even retarded by other educators, and made them brilliant over-achievers in a few months. These were kids from bad neighbourhoods with few financial resources and poor familial support. And I think, too, about the revolution in attitudes towards Down syndrome over the last few decades--how babies who were thought to have no potential and no hope because of their fixed attributes were left in institutions to rot and die, and how now those very same children with those very same attributes are busting expectations right left and centre today because people who care about them are determined not to be limited by a diagnosis.

In the workshop chapter in the back (which admittedly I found a little skimpy--more on that in a minute), there is a section on fixing the mindset of a preschooler who believes that ability is innate. The very first sentences of the solution state:

"You decide that, rather than trying to talk him out of the fixed mindset, you have to live the growth mindset. At the dinner table each evening, you and your partner structure the discussion around the growth mindset, asking each child (and each other): 'What did you learn today?'"

The very first thing--fix you.

Or me. Whatever. You know.

Ninety per cent of the book summarizes research on mindsets in various fields (education, parenting, sports, coaching, business leadership, the arts). Only the last chapter is devoted to figuring out how to change one's own fixed mindsets; and the how-to is a little sparse. In that it doesn't exist. (A variety of scenarios with potential responses are listed and discussed.) But then, it can't. How can you present someone with a ten-step program for overcoming a fixed mindset when it can be present in so many endeavours? You can't.

I tested my blood sugar, by the way. The ideal is 3.7-6.5. It was 12.0.

Posted by Andrea at 6:43 AM | Comments (16)

Outmatched

There's nothing like having your own eagerly-anticipated sick day (following an exhausting week of caring for one's offspring's sickness) being upstaged by one's spouse's much more dramatic illness (in a bodily fluid sort of way) to make a mother very cranky.

At least, it makes this mother cranky. After a week of no sleep, followed by a developing cold on Saturday, to be then solely responsible for child care on Sunday while one's spouse recuperates in the guest bedroom is no fun. On Monday, following the weekend that wasn't, to be solely responsible again for getting the child up, fed, drugged (her cough lingers), dressed, jacketed, strapped in, and delivered to the childcare facility that is twenty minutes out of one's way, while one's own cold develops apace and one wishes only for one's own comfortable bed is one definition of misery.

What pushes a mother over the edge, however, is when one's darling child chooses that very morning to practice their developing tantrum skills. I still can't it a temper tantrum, as there was no temper; however, the sobbing, coughing and projectile snot over not being given more time to finish the orange juice that she had to that point refused to touch was most impressive, as was its continuation through dressing, hairbrushing and jacketing. Twenty minutes later, when oen had her strapped in the car and was already twenty minutes late for work, not counting the driving-out-of-one's-way part, while a mother starts the engine and Frances continued to wail in her carseat, the edge of her blue winter coat pucked up around her face becoming damp and dark with tears, a mother might be a little frustrated.

A mother may, in fact, shout: "For fuck's sake, Frances! All this over a cup of orange juice!"

Then a mother may, while driving, remember the snowpants hung on the hook of the laundry room door, the toque on the front hall table, and the lack of object for show and tell. One may tell oneself that if one is going to throw a fit over a glass of orange juice one does not want to drink, one may perhaps need to face a consequence of not being able to play outside or participate in show-and-tell that day.

Ten minutes later, when the wailing has ceased, the mounting irritations no matter how legitimate will not spare a mother from a truckload of remorse and guilt, when one's offspring calmly says from the back seat:

"You shouldn't shout at me, Mummy."

Well played, Frances.

Posted by Andrea at 6:31 AM | Comments (13)

Another Mystery

I keep my daughter's hair long. It's a practice so routine that it hardly bears mentioning; except for how keenly aware I am that it is inconsistent with my feminism. Consider: the longer the hair, the more it requires maintenance. No "wash and go." Moreover, it tangles easily and as Frances shrieks at me every morning, "tanglies hurt!" What I should do and should have done since the beginning is cut it as short as I can. No mess, no maintenance, no pain. And while I do cut it regularly and kept it shorter than shoulder-length for the first two years, that's as far as I've gone.

Why? Because she's a girl. And no matter how much I intellectually understand that the messages this teaches are all wrong (beauty is pain, it's your job to be beautiful because you're female), her long golden hair is so pretty and shiny and the way her big blue eyes pop out of her face beneath her sideswept bangs when her hair is in a ponytail just makes me want to dish her up in a big bowl and eat her with a desert spoon. So pretty, so pretty. I can't resist it. If she were a boy, it would hurt me to chop it off, but chop it off I would.

This is the most glaring of the weaknesses I am aware of, but I do not believe for a second that it is the only one. I am certain that unconscious expectations about girls form a large part of our interactions, in ways that only Frances will be able to tell me, when she's old enough to do so.

As I've watched my feminist friends turn into feminist mothers, I've seen how our own gendered expectations and beliefs express themselves in our parenting practices, consciously or not. He really likes bright colours but I can't let him wear that, it's for girls and his hair is so beautiful long but people are starting to think he's a girl, so I've got to cut it off and she hates wearing dresses; how am I going to get her dressed up for our family photo shoot? and I never thought I'd buy pink for my daughter, but it just turns out it's the most beautiful colour on her. And then, sometime between the age of one and two years, when our children begin to express stereotypically gendered behaviours, we observe in shock and conclude that it must be biological. But we are not solid and impervious stones in a garden of gaseous influences. We are more similar to rags in a pond, soaking up whatever is nearby, until our brains are hodge-podges of known and unacknowledged ideas and motivations. There's a lot of stuff in the skull of your average Good Feminist Mother that would make her cringe, if she were aware of it.

I've based most of my own thinking on two books: Mother Nature, which I've already reviewed ad nauseum; and An Unconventional Family by Sandra Lipsitz Bem, an American gender-researcher and theorist. The latter book is based on her experiences in egalitarian marriages and feminist child-rearing, and includes not only her own recollections but also interviews with her ex-husband and children.

Lipsitz Bem writes of her efforts as "retarding their gender education while advancing their sex education." This ranged from the easy (or at least obvious) such as egalitarian divisions of labour within the home and exposure to non-traditional working arrangements, to the exceptionally difficult:

"Another way we retarded our children's gender education was to monitor--even to censor--books and television. I had no qualms about limiting television to three hours a week [three! hours! a week!] .... Books, in contrast, I hated even the thought of monitoring because I love books and I wanted our children to love them too. The problem is that if young children are allowed to sample freely from the world of children's literature, they will almost certainly be indoctrinated with the idea that girls and boys are not only different from each other but, even worse, that boys are more important. What else can one conclude, after all, when there are approximately ten boys in these stories for every girl and almost a hundred 'boy' animals for every 'girl' animal? (I'm not exaggerating.) [She's not, either. Go read your kids' Dr. Seuss books.] Or when the few females who are in these books almost always stay indoors and at home--no matter what their age or species--while the males go outdoors and have adventures. Or, perhaps worst of all, when the females are so unable to affect their own environments that when good things happen to them, those things just fall out of the sky, whereas when good things happen to males, their own efforts have usually played a part in making them occur.

"...although I have no artistic talent, I was handy with my whiteout and magic markers, which I used liberally to transform one main character after another from male to female by changing the character's name, by changing the pronouns, and even by drawing long hair (and, if age-appropriate, the outline of breasts) onto the character's picture. Nor did I limit my doctoring to the main characters."

Do you know anyone who does this? I don't. I don't want to elevate one person's ideas about feminist parenting to yet another impossible-to-achieve standard; but what I learned primarily from this book is what exactly I am up against, as a feminist mother, and what real anti-sexist parenting would entail--that it's not simply buying dolls for boys and trucks for girls; that it is, in fact, completely beyond me.*

One of Frances's favourite games right now is to make a "whole play-doh family." She got a set of play-doh cookie cutters for her birthday, and five of them are a mom, a dad, a little girl, a little boy, and a baby. We roll out the doh and make them all up, and a bed and pillow and blanket, and everyone takes turns putting everyone else down for a nap. It's a sweet and lovely game. And every time I notice how the little girl and little boy are differentiated from each other by the presence of a skirt and pigtails on the girl. Part of our conversation, now, is for Frances to note that "the little girl has ribbons in her hair and the Mummy has ribbons in her hair, too! But the little boy doesn't have ribbons in her hair."

Besides the adorable mangling of personal pronouns (which I do not correct), I hate that she is already learning that females are decorated. Thank you, play-doh manufacturer. Sadly, I am not as handy with whatever tools one might use to refashion plastic cookie-cutters as Lipsitz Bem was with her whiteout and magic markers; and I don't even know what to do or how to begin undermining this cultural message. Except to say, "That's true, this little boy doesn't wear ribbons in his hair; but some boys do. And I never wear ribbons in my hair." If Frances would stand for it, I'd make a family entirely of the undecorated play-doh shapes and we'd make up a new, non-nuclear family narrative. But right now she wants a WHOLE FAMILY and she's already learned that this means one Daddy and one Mummy and one Little Girl and one Little Boy and one Baby, and the Little Girl and the Mummy wear skirts and have ribbons in their hair.

That's not genetic. And (see first paragraph) I am not blameless.

"The third thing we did was to help them to understand that all cultural messages about sex and gender ... are created, whether now or in the distant past, by human beings with particular beliefs and biases. The appropriate stance to take toward such messages is thus not to assume that they are either true or relevant to your own personal life but to assume instead that they merely convey information about the beliefs and biases of their creators."

I was fortunate enough to have read this book a few times before Frances was born, so I was able to think about some of these things before they became issues. I'd determined fairly early, for instance, that I would buy toys my child asked for, and not care what side of the aisle they came from. That I would buy her comfortable, practical clothing--Frances owns and wears boys' clothing when it makes sense to do so. But the newborn gifts temporarily stumped me--four pink teddybears, plus other stuffed toys.

Knowing that the default sex in western culture is "he" and that without some forethought all of her toys except the pink ones would end up being boys, and that this was not what I wanted her to learn, I gave half of them boy names and half of them girl names. Including the pink teddybears, one of whom, named "Stuart," Frances particularly loves. She has latched on to this; almost every stuffed toy she owns is a "she"--not just the ones with long eyelashes, pink fur, or clutching babies.

But there's plenty I can't control, or at any rate, don't: Ruby's zealous femininity and Max's precocious masulinity, in defiance of any little girls or boys I've ever met; the toys and clothes picked by relatives, which are nearly uniformly pink and feminine; how every girl in Timothy Goes to School wears a skirt; how all toy girl Calico Critters and nearly all girl Little People wear skirts, even the farmers and mechanics; how, no matter where I look, the imaginative world presented to toddlers and preschoolers is more gender-codified than the real world, more rigid. Even the worst of adult women's magazines with their incessant and relentless gender-programming do ocassionally show women in pants.

And there's still me.

You, me, all of us; we're all products of our upbringing. My mother is a staunch feminist who has spent two decades in a job she loathes essentially to prove to the Old Boy's Club that she can; yet I think I could turn her grey with stories of what I remember learning about women from her when I was a child. Actually, she would flatly deny it; and if there is one mistake I am determined not to repeat, it is to turn away from the consequences of my parenting decisions when they were both unintentional and undesired. If my actions are making it harder for her to test gender boundaries, I want to acknowledge that.

Frances is very girly in some respects. She plays with dolls, and even her non-doll toys take turns as "babies" and get carried around on her shoulder while she soothes them down for naps. She likes to cook in her kitchen, and specializes in microwaving plastic strawberries which her Daddy is then forced to enjoy, over and over. When she plays with the dolls in her dollhouse, it's usually to make them all have a big happy family hug and tell each other how much they love themselves. Tea parties are fun; and when we have them, each of us has to use the spoon and cup and saucer that match. She loves pink. And it's true that while she has blocks and trains and trucks, she doesn't play with them as often as she plays with dolls.

But she loves frogs and worms--for anyone used to the familiar tableau of a little blond girl in a frilly pink dress screaming EWWW over the earthworms on the sidewalk, I imagine Frances holding one reverentially and saying "it's so cute" might be jarring. She was a scary lion for Hallowe'en, and loved to roar at people. She likes to lounge around the house in jogging pants, stomp in mud-puddles, pick up sticks and stones on our way to the park through the woods, use the hammer from her doctor's kit to pound pretend nails into the floor (or into people, depending), and put together her dinosaur puzzle. She likes to play catch. She prefers her blue kitty-cat-and-fish placemat to the pink Barbie ballerina one my SIL gave her for Christmas. Her current favourite shows are Scooby Doo, Spongebob Squarepants, WonderPets, Horton Hears a Who, and Clifford the Big Red Dog.

If she were a boy, which set of attributes would be dominant? Which set of attributes would people see as dominant?

Here's a better question: why do we have to divide these attributes into sets in the first place?

Why is it that as soon as our children start to evince a personality, we need to parse out whether or not they are behaving according to gendered type? Doesn't that say something about our expectations and their source? As long as Frances isn't tearing the heads off of ducklings or expressing affection for people by bashing their kneecaps with tire-irons, I couldn't care less if she's feminine or masculine. I celebrate everything she does because it's Frances who's doing it. A thousand naps an hour for Ella the Ellephant? Fabulous! Frog hunting in the backyard? Fantastic!

Because the last thing I want to do is teach her about gendered expectations by deciding whether any particular activity is "girly" or "boyish," or whether she as a person is behaving according to type.

Because I don't want any of my early assumptions about the "naturalness" of her interests and skills to become a trap she has to break out of later. This seems to me a real danger of looking at our children at this young age and saying "she likes pink--it must be biological after all." Once we've decided that our children are displaying proof of the biological essence of certain sex differences, where does that leave them if they change their mind in a few years?

Moreover, where does it leave us when working to eradicate those sex differences which are truly harmful? If we decide before they start school that they are simply girly and that's why they don't assert themselves, how do we teach them to be assertive? Conversely, if we decide that aggressive behaviour is proof of the unruliness of boys, how do we teach them to treat others with consideration? Haven't we given up before we've begun?

Our kids come into the world with their own temperaments. Our personalities are formed by some combination of nature and nurture, and which part of us comes from one or the other can never be fully known. And I think all mothers, at one point or another, are astonished to realize how little influence we have over the people our children become. But it's not the same to realize that I have nothing to do with her shoe-shopping predeliction or her physically affectionate dolls as it is for me to assume that these traits reside on her X chromosome. Maybe it was one too many viewings of Max and Ruby. Maybe she got it from her Dad. Maybe she picked it up from the girls in daycare, along with that atrocious and thankfully temporary stage of everything beautiful being "just like Barbie." Maybe I am completely wrong and I did teach her this, without knowing. Or maybe all of the above. There's no control-Frances, so who she would have been in the absence of these influences can never be known.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, and I don't want to find out. People are tightly-knotted mysteries; unravelling the wherefores, putting cause to effect and determining how-much-mine and how-much-not-mine would ruin it. Why does she cry sometimes when I knock on the tent, when most of the time she begs me to? What rule of her expanding universe have I violated? What is it she loves about pretending to be Ruby on that episode when they are trying to catch the bus, and why does she laugh so hard when I pout and cry "Stay home!"? Why doesn't she want us to call her gorgeous or cute or beautiful or smart or strong anymore? Why does she insist on being "just Frances"? Why must Bella Bear sit on that chair during the tea party? Why must Boots the Monkey and the Whole Play-Doh Family always be made out of the red tub? What does she see in my mole, anyway? Why does she like pink? Why does she so often insist that pink is her favourite colour and want to get the pink version of whatever is on offer, and then reject it in favour of some other colour for days at a time? Why does she prefer to eat her cereal as two separate food items: cereal as finger food from a bowl, and milk in a glass beside it?

Maybe one day she'll tell me. Maybe I won't like it. Maybe she won't tell me. Maybe she can't. Could you sit down and determine which of your traits and interests are due to temperament vs. upbringing vs. genes vs. sex chromosomes? Would you want to? Aren't we mysteries even to ourselves? Isn't the unknowableness of human beings part of what makes us human?

Reading the interviews with her children in the back of the book reveals a fascinating glimpse of two people who regularly violate gender norms and consider it a a basic human right to be able to do so. I found this question and answer set particularly interesting because both their son and their daughter answered it in similar ways, though here I am including the daughter's voice:

"Someone else could easily categorize your interests as feminine and Jeremy's as masculine. And they could even go further and say that this is an example of how your parents' gender-liberated child-rearing 'failed' because it produced a boy with boy interests and a girl with girl interests. How would you respond to that?

"Why bother classifying our interests that way? It's just so obvious who is talented where. If you listen to me sing, you can't help but say, 'This girl has a great voice.' And if you look at Jeremy when he's doing math, it's clear that he is a mathematical 'genius.' People just have talents where they have them, and you're not going to get a boy who hates math becoming a great mathematician any more than you're going to get a girl who has no voice taking opera seriously. We don't do what we do well because Jeremy's a boy and I'm a girl. And I think it's absurd to talk about any kind of child-rearing failing when it produces children with interests and even passions that are guided by talent." (emphasis mine)

Why bother classifying our children this way? Next to the harm it can do--to the harm we ourselves have experienced when being boxed in or out of this or that because of our sex--where is the benefit to be gained by deciding whether our children are feminine or masculine, especially at this early age?

~~~~~

* Though I intend to write and make storybooks of my own for Frances, and have made one already that stars Frances playing with the animals in our backyard. It's not even hard, so if anyone is curious about how to make a book, let me know.

Posted by Andrea at 6:54 AM | Comments (17)

Mom Jeans

All over the print and online media these days, I see people yammering about how babies are the coolest accessories and it's now de rigeur to be a mom. This is nonsense.

There is undeniably a fascination with Hollywood bellies--is it a bump or isn't it?--but I have yet to see any evidence that it makes the starlets in question cool. What it seems to do rather is make them safely uncool; it reduces their status and makes them more like us. And there is a lot more overpriced kiddie gear, but I don't think this has anything to do with how cool it is to be a Mom. In fact, it's the opposite: having a kid is so incredibly uncool that you need to spend a small fortune on designer baby duds to prove that you haven't lost your style sense in the transition to motherhood. "I still got it! Maybe I can't wear those clothes now but I still know what's cool and I still care about what's in style, and I will prove this by not putting my child in something with butterflies on it."

And in what way does this reflect how cool it is to be a Mom?

It's not.

Think about it: Mom jeans.

No one wants to wear Mom jeans. Girls don't want to wear Mom jeans. Wives don't want to wear Mom jeans. And especially Moms don't want to wear Mom jeans.

Why not? If Moms were cool, if being a Mom was cool, if a baby was the ultimate accessory and giving birth mandatory for today's young overachieving woman, Mom jeans would be the ultimate status symbol. You have arrived at Momdom, and have the jeans to prove it!

Instead, Moms go out of their way when buying clothing to get whatever seems most likely to make them look like a young, single, skinny girl who just happens to be babysitting her sister's kids. The very phrase "Mom jeans" calls forth a whole host of stereotypical associations of a woman who's let herself go, doesn't care about her looks anymore, isn't up on the latest styles, is maybe a bit mushyheaded or overly sentimental, has lost her identity to her kids.

It's not exactly evidence of Mom Pride, is it?

I remember reading about a culture, I can't remember their name anymore, but one of those cultures typically featured in the National Geographic of old where women went around topless. The journalist (a man) was admiring a young woman's breasts, which was noticed by his guide (also a man). "Very nice," he said, "But here, women want their breasts to sag. It proves they've had kids." Now that's Mom Pride.

And what have we got instead? A culture where every body change associated with pregnancy and childrearing is reviled, a culture where every form of display (clothing, accessories, vehicle) is carefully chosen so as to mask one's parenthood. You don't want the minivan. You don't want a diaper bag; it's better if it looks like a purse. You don't want sensible shoes, gods no. You don't want an easy care haircut; you want to emulate the hairstyle of a 21-year-old club girl. And most of all, you do NOT want Mom Jeans; you want low-cut bootleg jeans with a nice wash, just like the highschool girls are wearing.

Every day we're surrounded by this nonsense that it's so cool to be a Mom now that it takes tremendous strength to stand up to the cultural onslaught and resist the pressure. That parents have taken over the cultural discourse with their self-centred whining and the childless are courageously fighting back. Bull. Shit. I say.

Yes, there's pressure to knock out a kid of your own, these days; but as part of some dizzying new celebration of the awesome power and coolness of motherhood? Not likely. More like a part of the backlash against women, a constant reminder that we are, after all, wombs with legs, and if we try to be anything else we are working against our basic natures; more like a way to put us all back in our place ("Shut up and have a baby so I can ignore you, all right?").

But that this is any indication that Motherhood is getting some kind of respect or admiration or recognition? Please.

If it were, every girl in North America would be dying to wear a pair of Mom jeans; they'd sell out at $5,000 a pair from the fanciest hoity-toity department stores that I don't even know the names of, because I am not cool. If it were, the starlets wouldn't be flaunting how exactly unchanged they were by pregnancy and breastfeeding, they'd be dying for sagging breasts and tiger bellies and plastering those on the covers of major women's magazines.

So there.

Posted by Andrea at 9:51 AM | Comments (16)

Love Song

edited to add: This post is in reply to a recent post at Her Bad Mother

There was a time, when Frances was between nine months and a year old, when I did