This morning, Saskia wanted to close the cereal box. As I tried to subtly help her, she said, “I do it myself. I don’t do it yourself.” Translation: Back off, mama (more direct command often heard from Saskia is this: Go away-way!). I did what many parents of toddlers would do in that situation; I let her close the box. I said, Great job, Saskia! Then, surreptitiously, as I returned the box to the pantry, I reclosed it.
Autonomy with an older child often gets more complicated. The other day, as is regularly the case, Lucien, our sixth grader, was struggling to decide to actually do his homework. That is to say, he was whining. He was giving up before he started. He was trying to engage my attentions and pull me into his miserable morass of not wanting to do homework. I’m pretty sure that this time, like so many others before, he was capable of the assignment and yet felt tired and overwhelmed. When I try to help—be his scribe, ask a question, encourage a specific outcome—invariably a twist on I-don’t-do-it-yourself occurs. Unlike the cereal box, I can’t swoop in and fix his homework and sometimes it’s hard (for me) to let him do the less than hardworking job.
Aside, in case you’re wondering: do I sometimes wish for an unschooling environment without homework—or homework struggles? Sure. At the very same time, I see Lucien growing as a thinker and often as a doer and so this year of loads of homework is serving its purpose.
Complicating our sixth grade spring is the uncertainty about the coming year’s transition to middle school. Lucien’s numbers are high (that’s bad) in the charter school lotteries he entered and the class’ visit to the middle school overwhelmed him and so he did what a scared, stubborn ‘tween would do; he latched onto a new plan. His chosen plan is homeschooling. I imagine having this child home all the time, facing an increased amount of homework (as in, home-based work) and simply home to be like an unending series of open cereal boxes I can’t help him close. I am nearly one hundred percent certain that being with his peers is the key priority for these years. And I am even more certain that he doesn’t need to negotiate nearly so much as homeschooling would require with me (I work at home).
This lovely, strong-willed, smart, sensitive guy (and although I have four children, he is the middle one) does need a few things from me that require a great deal of effort on my part: he needs my patience, my presence, my confidence in him, and my willingness to remain cool, even disengaged from power struggles rather than reveal annoyance or disappointment. Tall order? Yeah, I fail daily. Regularly, I feel that I am letting him down, parenting without grace or graciousness, saying no too often (lamb and fennel to practice making a meal? Homeschool? Watch television first, and then start homework?).
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And then, there is this question: is it okay to reveal that I’m struggling over how to respond as a parent? Am I betraying Lucien’s privacy—or anyone else’s—when I admit that I’m trying to figure out how best to parent a particular child?
This privacy issue has been coming up a bunch recently. On her Mama Pundit blog, Katie Granju wrote about how difficult parenting her eldest is—the world of parenting teens, where the stakes are high and she feels isolated and afraid and incompetent much of the time (me, too)—but can’t share tales in the same way.
Privacy came up in an interview another writer friend did for the Open Adoption forum, in which an adoptive mother spoke about saying her daughter resembles her in-laws rather than tell people the child is adopted. She wants that decision, of whether to reveal she’s adopted, to fall to her daughter when she’s old enough. As an adoptive mother, I understand this particular kind of moment: very often people tell me that Saskia looks just like me, and I get stymied. I don’t necessarily want adoption to be at the forefront of conversations with kind strangers. At the same time, I don’t want to imply that “passing” as “mine” is somehow better than truthfulness. If she looked very different from me, and people assumed she was adopted, that would not be “worse.”
Because I ended up with three longhaired boys (now, I have just one, the seven year-old, one shaggily in the middle and the eldest with short hair) I have dealt with this issue of passing for a very long time; my boys routinely have been recognized as girls. The boys grew very comfortable with this. It seems as if we all respond similarly: sometimes, we correct people, clarify that they are simply boys with long hair; sometimes, we just nod and continue along.
When we explain the boys with long hair or the girl who resembles me but is in fact, adopted, I think we are doing a service in that we are saying that things aren’t necessarily as they appear and perhaps certain assumptions are worth checking. My little town of Northampton, Massachusetts, with its large lesbian population means that my kids (and their friends) say things like when I get married, I’ll have to decide that with my wife or husband. Huzzah to blowing open assumptions!
Yet, our lives are ours and not really lived in order to set examples. Privacy is important. And so is community. While I don’t want to “overshare” or overexpose any of my kids, I don’t want to become afraid of finding ways to remain connected through rocky parenting territory. Studies show post-partum depression is greater when women are isolated. There must be a corollary for parenting teens. We know, and can hear parents reflect (take the new anthology Gravity Pulls You In that offers perspectives on parenting kids on the autism spectrum) that parenting special-needs kids can be isolating, and the isolation contributes to feeling bogged down and overwhelmed.
When people bring out that line—and believe me, once you’re talking to adoptive parents a bunch, as happens when you become one, that line is kind of popular—that they want the kid to decide or for the adoption story to belong to the kid, I always end up feeling a little niggling anxiety, because that assumption of privacy kind of casts—to my mind—a little shame, a little “less than being with your first family” to the story up front. Our experiences are prisms and we can see them in so many ways; they reflect in the light and reveal so many colors. My impulse is to feel that for Saskia, the fact that she is adopted is simply part of who she is and so we can speak freely and she’ll never know herself another way (are there parts to the story I would not share that way? Of course: to every adoption is a complicated tale that is more private, and eventually, can be hers when she’s ready). Her family, though, is larger than those she lives with and I see that as a positive—no qualifications on being loved—and I want very much to communicate to her how very, very loved she is, no shame in that, no secrecy.
Finally, there really is no shame that parenting’s difficult at times. The alternatives include not trying, or pretending that an airbrushed version of parenting exists and is actually preferable to the real deal. I choose the real deal. And with sensitivity and respect for privacy in mind, I choose to share it.
