UnchartedParent.com

Everyone’s talking about the country’s financial crisis and what it might mean for our personal economies and for our country. For once, federal legislation is at the forefront of many people’s lives as we follow the will-it-or-won’t-it-pass drama of the bailout bill before Congress. And it’s not at all surprising that the increasingly frenetic presidential race has been almost completely taken over by this issue.

What is surprising is that my husband was able to discover a textbook example of poor parenting principles in the back-and-forth battle between the candidates over the economy.

Last week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced several days prior to his scheduled debate with Democratic nominee Barack Obama that he was suspending his campaign and would not appear at the debate unless an agreement was reached beforehand on a solution to the crisis. He stated that he was taking this step because the economic problem was so dire and that it required all of his attention, and he challenged his opponent to take the same steps. Presumably, McCain felt that if Obama refused to go along with McCain’s proposal, then Obama would emerge from the exchange appearing to be more concerned about his chances for winning the presidency than about the state of the American economy. (For his part, Obama did refuse to go along with McCain, saying in essence that he believed a president needed to be able to do more than one thing at a time and that the two candidates owed the American people a public discussion of their views on the crisis.)

It was an interesting strategy, but we never got to see how it played out. After a couple of days of Obama consistently disagreeing with McCain’s position, McCain reversed himself. Without explaining the change in his position, McCain announced that he would be going to the debate after all.

“Hey, he can’t do that,” my husband protested. “Every parent knows that if you say you’re going to do something, you’ve got to follow through. You can’t say that you’re going to stop the car unless behavior improves and then just keep driving. Every parent in the world knows that you’ll be left with no credibility; good luck next time you tell the kids anything.”

I laughed, but it was a good point. And with seven kids, you’d think it’s one McCain would have known.

A mom-friend of mine who is also a lawyer just sent in this gem from her five-year-old daughter:

“Mommy, can boys be lawyers, too?”

Also today, I had my first first-grade parent-teacher conference. My son’s teacher relayed an anecdote from a classroom discussion of Santa Claus. (Somebody tell these kids that it’s not even Halloween yet!)

When someone mentioned everyone’s favorite gift-giver, the teacher asked, “Whose house does Santa Claus come to?”

“Not mine. I’m not Christian,” “Jack” announced with a matter-of-fact voice, completely unselfconscious and completely unfazed.

The class simply went on about its business.

Never mind the stock market and banking woes. It’s nice to know that in some ways, the world definitely is changing for the better.

My three-and-a-half year-old daughter’s behavior has been abysmal lately. Always one to challenge parental authority, she’s been particularly difficult and defiant over the past week. She’s also been denying herself necessary activities, like peeing, as well as activities she loves, like gymnastics class, just to test limits. Feeling tested way over my limit, I tried to have a serious discussion with her a few days ago about her behavior.

“‘Emmie,’” I asked, my most concerned expression deliberately pasted onto my face, “do you like arguing with Mommy and Daddy a lot?”

“No,” she responded, equally serious in countenance.

“Then why do you keep doing all of these things that you know you’re not supposed to do?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Because I’m three!”

And the conversation was over, because I really couldn’t argue with that.

This is not something I ordinarily do. I am a writer, and that means I like to write. I certainly don’t mind if someone pays me for an essay or article reprint, but no one pays me to write this blog. I like generating new material and posting it for anyone to read.

However . . .

I have had so many conversations over the past few days concerning the upcoming elections and what people are really looking for in their political leaders that I feel compelled to re-post an entry from May. In short, I am growing increasingly concerned about people’s desire to vote for someone to hold (or who might potentially hold) the highest office in the United States because he or she is “just like me,” as opposed to someone who is allegedly “elitist” because he or she is “too smart” and therefore “not like me.”

A clarification: I have my own political leanings, and if you’ve been reading regularly or if you know me, you know what those leanings are. I’ve got plenty of friends and colleagues who disagree with me, however, and I welcome many of the debates which emerge from those differing viewpoints. In this post, I am NOT condemning people who support candidates other than my own for any reason at all; rather, I am calling into question the particular line of thinking that drives people to support in the voting booth the candidates with whom one could best be pals rather than the brightest candidates who possess the best skill sets to do the jobs in question.

With that said, here is a post I originally put up on May 22, 2008.

Let’s Think About What We Really Want

As kids, some of us got A’s and B’s in school, wanted to please our parents and teachers and in general were good students. Others of us harbored similar ambitions but struggled for every decent grade we got.

Members of a third category did not aim so high. These kids affirmatively believed that doing well in school was not “cool,” that kids who got A’s were “dorks” or “geeks” (I’m dating myself, aren’t I?), and that the absolute worst thing that could happen in school was that their peers would think they weren’t fun. As for brains; who cared? That’s not what was important in their eyes anyway.

As parents, we don’t want our kids to fall into this third category. Regardless of our kids’ intelligence levels, we want them to learn to work hard, to strive to do as well as they possibly can in school and in life and not to fall prey to the trap of selling themselves short by burying any innate intelligence they do have beneath the trappings of today’s version of socially acceptable underachievement.

So here’s a question that’s been on my mind lately: if we don’t want our kids to hide their intelligence or to aim for the lowest common denominator, why in bloody hell do we seem to want this for our political leaders?

It’s the same mentality.

I’ve long believed that in presidential politics, the candidate who scored highest on the “beer test” was the one most likely to win the election. (Yes, yes, I know I’m hardly the first person to think of this, but go with me for now anyway.) In other words, between two candidates, with which one would you most like to sit down and share a beer? Who’s the most fun? Who seems more like “a regular guy?” (Or girl?)

Why does this matter?

Of course we want our president to understand us; we’re “the people,” and he or she is our leader. If he or she has no clue what our lives are like, then he or she won’t really be able to appreciate our needs and the needs of our country as a whole. (Sorry for all the pronouns, but even they are political.)

But I’d like a little more from our president; from all of our leaders, in fact. I know lots of regular people—I even like many of them—but if I’m being honest, I don’t think many of the people with whom I’m personally acquainted are qualified to be President of the United States. Heck, I want my president to be smarter than I am, maybe better educated. I want someone at the helm who can understand complex policies, see both the forests and the trees, and wade through a tangle of issues and bureaucratic red tape, international tension and domestic pressures, and then emerge from that morass with an idea that seems so brilliant that even if I don’t buy into it hook, line and sinker, I’m impressed enough that I’m willing to see where it will take us. Then I want my president to navigate the diverse and turbulent waters that make up this nation and, using his or her intellect, charisma and whatever other phenomenal tools he or she has at his or her disposal, bring us together to travel the long, hard road from point A to point B.

I want the smart kid to be president. I want the kid who knew all the answers, who studied, did his or her homework and worked hard. That kid had to know how to have some fun, of course; otherwise we’re talking about a kid who’s now probably insane or at least on multiple medications for migraines, ulcers and high-blood pressure, but I really don’t care if he or she was a blast to hang out with or not. I don’t plan to party with my president. I’ve got other people to fill that function.

So let’s take a few moments to think about what it is we want, both out of our kids and out of our presidents. At first glance, the two might not seem related, but it seems to me that with some of the pandering we’ve seen in this long, long election so far, we’re really talking about the same thing.

What sort of lesson are we teaching our children by showing them that when it comes to presidents, being smart isn’t cool?

This recent trip to Washington marked the first time that I had spent so much time away from my family. I left my husband, my six-and-a-half year-old son, my three-and-a-half year-old daughter and my cat for six days. It would be tough on all of us, I knew, but the kids would muddle through despite missing me, my husband would have a tough week but survive, I’d get to focus on my work and get a break from family responsibilities and the cat, well, she gets ignored anyway. As I flew off to our nation’s capital, I anticipated tearful bedtime phone calls with my kids and renewed appreciation from my husband when I returned. Oh, yeah, and then there’s the cat.

So here’s what really happened:

The kids were in tears alright. They cried in increasingly loud, whiney protests each evening when their father insisted they come to the phone and speak to their mother. The three-year-old refused to speak to me altogether one night. And when I finally decided to question the six-year-old as to what he was doing that was so much more important than saying hello to his mother, he replied, “Watching sports.” (Hey, pal, save it for your wife in thirty years, okay?)

My husband appreciated me alright. Not always blessed with the best sense of timing, he came down with some virus that acted very much like strep throat a few days after I left. He spoke to me in feverish hazes, couldn’t get off the phone fast enough, and, might, I think, have fed the kids something other than macaroni-and-cheese for dinner one of the nights I was gone.

The morning of my return, I woke to an email from my worn-down husband displaying the following subject line: “End of the Rope.” In an email sent at 6:13 a.m., he wrote that he had to give a timeout to “your daughter” at 5:45 a.m. When I got out of the shower, I found another email, this one labeled, “Beyond the Rope.” This message informed me that “your cat,” finally fed up with the absence of the one person she likes (she pre-dates my husband and has never accepted him, much less the kids), had peed on the carpet of the kids’ playroom more than once.

I emailed back, “I’m on my way!”

To be fair, my three-year-old greeted me with a huge grin, a shout of “Mommy!” and a bear hug, then let several minutes pass between this enthusiastic welcome and her first challenge to my authority. My son declined to come to the airport as he was too busy playing with friends, but he did say “hi” when he saw me. My husband hugged me, allowed me to kiss him on the cheek and disappeared under the covers as quickly as he could (he didn’t ask for company and really, that’s just as well).

And the cat?

She peed again in the kids’ playroom not long after I got home.

First, I know my blogging schedule has been erratic lately, so my apologies if you’ve been checking and can’t figure out what the heck has been going on. I’ve been planning and then actually executing a research trip, and I’m writing this now from Washington, D.C.

And this leads me to the real point of my blog post today: the seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

I had the honor of attending the Pentagon Memorial Dedication Ceremony this morning—and I use the word “honor” very deliberately. It was an honor to be present with the families, friends and colleagues of the 184 people who died on that awful, unimaginable day seven years ago. It was an honor to share with them this remembrance of their loved ones, this act of turning unspeakable horror into a show of strength, unity and love.

I lived just outside of Washington, D.C. seven years ago, and I will never forget the sights, sounds and wrenching emotions of that day and the ones that followed. Likewise, I will always remember today’s dedication and its re-creation of sadness, hope and patriotism that most of us experienced in those first few days and weeks after the planes dove from the sky.

If I say that this commemoration was “moving,” I am asking that word to relay meaning far beyond its capabilities. There were so many individual stories that touched me today that I couldn’t possibly list them all here. I will write of some of them in other forums. But as this is a parenting blog, I will share one moment in particular that caused tears to run down my cheeks.

As I began to wander through the Memorial itself, I attempted to take in the benches, lined up by the victims’ ages, each one dedicated to an individual who perished. The first five benches were set apart from the rest, and I realized that these five victims were the children who died that day. I paused at one of these benches and listened as a man explained to a child whom I presume was his son—and who looked to be approximately the same age as my six-and-a-half year-old son—in hushed, somber voice the meaning of the Memorial’s layout.

“These benches,” he said as he knelt, “face toward the Pentagon. They are for the people who died on the plane. And these benches,” he continued as he turned and pointed, “face away from the building, and they are for the people who were killed inside the building.”

I watched the young boy’s face as his father spoke. He concentrated on his father’s words and examined the benches as he was instructed. His expression did not change for a second or two, and then he looked at his father and repeated, slowly, “The people who died on the plane?”

I recognized his puerile expression. I see it frequently on my own kids whenever they are trying to make sense of something they have difficulty comprehending. And I saw it on so many adults’ faces in those first days after September 11, including my own when I looked in the mirror. I still struggle with the question of how to explain the inexplicable to my own two children.

I saw many things today. I saw tears, I saw resolve, I saw hope. I encourage anyone who comes to Washington to visit the Memorial to remember what happened and to honor and commemorate the lives of those who died. And if there is anyone who ever doubts whether hideous evil or wondrous love really is present in the world, I encourage you especially to come to the Pentagon, because here you will find abundant evidence of the existence of both.

I’ve just come from a parenting rite of passage, a motherhood ritual as American as apple pie and baseball (and which will likely land me in a booth at a local baseball game someday, selling $1.00-per-slice apple pie). As I write this, I’ve just returned from my very first PTO meeting.

For the uninitiated, PTO stands for “Parent-Teacher Organization.” This is the group that runs the public school district-wide craft fair, the bake sale, the pizza fundraisers and the magazine drives. They raise the money the schools need for the “extras” (which in some places include little details like pencils and paper), and sometimes they run programs, too. They serve as the liaison between the parents, the teachers and the administration, and most public schools I know just wouldn’t be the same without them.

Now that I have a first-grader who gets on that bright yellow bus every morning, I feel it’s my duty to get involved with the school. And one of the places I began was with the PTO.

I could write a number of different observations from my first meeting, like the fact that I sat around a table in the elementary school library with more than two dozen dedicated people, all of whom wanted to contribute their time and efforts to benefit their kids and their schools. I could mention that for every task thrown onto that table, someone volunteered to pick it up and run with it (an extremely rare occurrence, in my experience). I could talk about the different moms I met and what they shared about their experiences with the kids.

But one thing I can’t talk about is the dads I met. Why? Because there weren’t any there.

Now, before you attack me on this one, I know: all those moms were able to attend the meeting because the dads were home with the kids. My own husband fell into that category. And thank goodness for those men, because without them, we women would have to miss the meetings or find them so unproductive in a room filled with overtired, cranky children that we may as well miss them.

Yet, I was still surprised that the PTO population was represented 100 percent by women. In a twenty-first century world where women are getting paid to work outside the home more than ever before, where men no longer have a right to expect accolades for helping to raise and spending time with their kids (though they do get them, even as women do not), I’m surprised that there wasn’t a single man who said to his wife, “Honey, you stay with the kids tonight. I’d like to get involved at school and go to the PTO meeting.”

Okay, so maybe I’m naïve. But as I was having my flashbacks to the fifties and seventies (and I wasn’t even alive in the fifties), I was thinking that it would have been nice to have a more representative sampling of parents in the room. I rarely say this, but what was missing was a little testosterone.

Women are traditionally the school volunteers in America, the ones who do the tasks for free to benefit the schools while the men earn the money. But some traditions deserve to be discarded. I love the guys like my husband who put the kids to bed so I can go out and get involved in the school and in my community. But surely, in 2008, there must be a few of you guys who want to join us women around that table in the library, to figure out ways to support your kids’ schools.

We could use a few good men.

Thank you to Melissa Parlaman and Graco for naming my post from last month, “The Toughest Part of Parenting,” as one of their favorites for the month of August! Click here to read the post they selected.

Have you heard of Jericho Scott?

Until a week ago, I hadn’t. Nor had most people. But now, lots of people know about the nine-year-old pitcher from New Haven, Connecticut, who throws a 40-mph fastball right on target. Interestingly, though, it’s not Scott’s fastball itself that’s thrust him into the spotlight. It’s the fact that his youth league disbanded his undefeated team in order to keep him off the pitcher’s mound; in short, they deemed him too good to play.

Before going any further, it’s important to note here that Scott’s pitches have never hit or otherwise injured any player. But the last time he took the mound, the discouraged opposing team forfeited the game and left rather than face Scott. He’s that good.

So what do we do when a kid exhibits a natural talent for something, coupled with dedication and a love of that activity? Separate him from his peers and/or prevent him from doing it, of course.

Huh?

For his part, nine-year-old Scott feels guilty about what’s happened. “I feel sad. I feel like it’s my fault that nobody could play.”

I can imagine that it’s tough for other nine-year-olds to play against Scott. They can’t win against him; they can’t tell themselves that they play baseball just as well as he does.

But isn’t one of the reasons kids engage in sports and other activities so that they can learn about the world they live in? In the real world, some people are very, very good at one thing or another. It’s a sign of maturity when we can respect those who excel and try to learn from them, maybe even admire them, all the while understanding that we’re still worthy as human beings even if we don’t throw the fastest ball, run the fastest sprint, play piano like a prodigy. If we want our kids to know how to retain self-esteem in a world of varying talents as adults, the time to begin teaching them that skill is when they are children.

Did the other swimmers leave the pool when Michael Phelps dove in to claim his seventh and eighth gold medals? Now that he’s indisputably the best in the world, should swimming officials ban him from competition? Or, maybe, does he give other swimmers something to strive for, maybe even act as a source of inspiration?

Many years ago, I worked with children in a setting where excellence was at best, ignored, and at worst, actively discouraged. No child was encouraged to be better than average because the value of sameness was prized more highly than that of individuality. The time was 1991 and the place was post-communist Prague, where I taught English conversation in a public school. Reform had overturned the top levels of government by then, but many of the same teachers and heads of schools who had been in place under decades of communist rule remained in their positions, and their attitudes had not changed. My students saw me for only one, perhaps two hours per week, and my approach to their varying levels of English ability confounded them because I wanted them all to work hard. I remember two students in particular, a fourteen-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old boy, both very intelligent overall and possessing high levels of fluency in English. I made them my unofficial aides so they could learn more English by speaking with me while they helped their classmates improve their own language skills. But I watched as other, older teachers repeatedly chastised these students for the misbehavior that resulted from their boredom at being forced to work far below their abilities at all times. Not once did I see another teacher encourage these kids, recognize their abilities and help them develop the talents they so clearly possessed.

What message does it send to our kids if the reward for skill and success is banishment? We all tell our kids to work hard and try their best at almost any endeavor. I don’t know about anyone else, but the advice I offer to my children doesn’t include qualifications such as, “try your best unless you’re doing really well; then take it back a few notches so you’re just like everybody else.” I discourage bragging, teasing others who don’t perform as well and excessive showing off, but I want my kids to be proud of their skills and accomplishments. And yes, that means even if they do something better than everyone else.

What happened to nine-year-old Jericho Scott is not what I want for my kids. It’s not what should be happening to him, and it’s not the example the adults of New Haven should be setting for the rest of their kids.

We say we want our kids to be the best they can be. We should mean it.