Avoiding Over-Parenting Means Being Comfortable Living With Mistakes
My response to Madeline Levine’s New York Times August 5, 2012 editorial, “Raising Successful Children.”
As the mother of three fully charged wee ones, I have started to regard summertime as I do Christmas: the storybook stereotype just ain’t the reality. Although at first blush, the concept of summer swims into view with delights aplenty, awash in sun-drenched relaxation, its actual manifestation is far less picturesque.
Each year I fall prey to the same whimsy: I won’t sign the kids up for any camps. We’ll just hang out and enjoy the absence of a schedule. I cling to this plan with a self-celebratory vengeance. How lucky my children are to have me! How important it is to do nothing, to enjoy each other without the daily grind of packed lunches, rushed teeth brushing, and tearful drop-offs.
The usual trajectory is that our boundless unscheduled family time remains joyful for the first three or four days. No alarm clocks! Why brush hair? It’s overrated. Pajamas all day long! Mismatched legos coat the bedroom carpets. Breakfasts morph into multi-tiered events. The garage is foraged — old toys and new yard tools discovered.
And then, midway through day 5 or so, it happens. Family bliss comes to a screeching halt. The shouting outweighs the laughing. Doors slam. Incomprehensible rivalries develop over placemats, tattered magazines, turns switching on the blender (yes, really). My fantasy film, 100 Days of Doing Nothing, is interrupted by endless obnoxious commercials and I bolt from the theatre, desperate for my daily planner. With a sigh, I abandon my laid-back parental righteousness, begrudgingly recall the ‘I told you so’ warnings from my husband, and start calling summer camps like a madwoman.
The truth is, there is no perfect solution. Too much scheduled activity makes my kids – all kids! – bananas. By the same token, too much free time encourages them to eat each other alive, not the temptation I want to encourage. Striking family harmony is a fine balance.
In parenting conversations with my husband, I often define our primary objective as setting the kids up to succeed – in whatever form that takes for them as individuals. That means not dragging my 5-year-old to the grocery store when he is tired and I am impatient. That means not serving my daughter beets and tofu every night of the week. And it also means paying attention to each of my kids’ need for equal parts structure, stimulation, togetherness, and solitude. How this is ever lost on me is mind boggling (and embarrassing) to face. After all, the workable matrix they require to thrive is comprised of the very elements I need myself – no matter that it is bathing suit season.
Every day, my mind is overtaken by the same dream.
Somewhere over my rainbow is a place bathed in muted colors where people congregate to practice yoga, gather their families, and just plain hang out.
The inhabitants of my fantasy are not Hari Krishnas. They, like me, are busy parents festooned with yogurt-stained jersey knits, wads of jangling car keys, and diaper bags aplenty. We race into the building with sunglasses askew, kids trailing behind, and immediately uncover a feeling of solace. United by the fullness of our days, length of our to-do lists, and stiffness of our lower backs, we come in search of respite.
And this place, this magical place, oozes respite. Like an enchanted bricks-and-mortar wellness custodian, it sweeps us into a collective swaddle. We smile, we stretch, we swoon, we renew. Our kids – within earshot but immersed in their own delights – swim in a sea of playfulness, wonder, and relaxation.
Releasing myself from the assembly, I reunite with my children, noticing the lightness in my step, the depth to their glee. Hand in hand, we depart, armed for the challenges, joys, and mediocrities that await. Soon, our exchange of knowing winks reveals, we’ll be back.
Elias Tripp, Mommy on Yoga Mat. Washable marker on crumpled paper, 5 x 11 inches. ©2012
Dear blog, I am sorry to have blatantly ignored your yearning glances all these long months. I promise I have not forgotten you and moved on to more stylishly distracting manifestations of the written word. You are still my one and only. My cheating exploits are entirely within bounds. Cross my heart.
Truth be told, I have started working again. Yes, actually working. Starting a business, to be precise. The wild wondrous risk of it all is positively addictive, or tummy rupturing, depending on the day.
Will you accept my faltering loyalty in the months to come? I hope so. It is the best I’ve got, and its all for you.
Published today on Role/Reboot, my unlikely treatise on why anti-television parents should let their kids watch. At least sometimes…
Dear December,
Once I knew you. Together we tasted candy canes on icy crisp evenings and wrapped gloved fingers around the handles of a sled. We sang beneath twinkling lights; daydreamed in red, green, and gold; and bobbed in crowded rivers of anticipation and glee. Advent dawned and you kept vigil at my bedside each magical night. In the morning, we rose to dance amongst family and fable, myth and mania. You dazzled me.
They say you passed through town again. I smelled warm gingerbread perfume on the air and caught a glimpse of tangled shimmering ribbons – echoes of your presence. But we did not meet. We did not dine. We did not climb under warm blankets to whisper secrets and sip delight.
I will not forget you, but will savor in the knowledge that you are sweetening the dreams of a new friend. Caught up in your spell, I see him swelling with joy and humming your tune. Beneath green branches, his small hand reaches for mine and I hum along.
Thankfully, the Santa Claus we eagerly await is directed by a well-intentioned female agenda.
Last week’s piece for Role/Reboot —
Today’s spoonful is a piece published last month on Babble that has resonated with many mothers. I consider it a meditation on reconciling identity.
The Domestic Grind: I feel like I got my Masters in stain removal
I offer this piece in honor of Greece, a country I have borrowed so many times, it now feels like my own. Although I lack full comprehension of the angst, struggle, and turmoil that have gripped its people this year, I – like many – hold fast to the belief that Greece possesses a uniquely magical spirit that is both unconquerable and timeless.
Her Greece
I have traveled to Greece – specifically the placid, windswept island of Paros – countless times in my adult life. During the lengthy, inevitable pauses between visits, I carry a mental snapshot of the place. It depicts beloved highlights — clear sparkling sea, cool sips of sweet Ouzo, heavy afternoon slumber — that elegantly transform from memory to reality each time I return. This time, my focus is elsewhere. Attempting a vicarious experiment, I have tuned my gaze to what this paradise must feel like to my 6-year-old daughter.
My family is eight days into what promises to be a rejuvenating month away from work, home, and routine in California. We inhabit a hybrid role on the island. Neither natives nor tourists, we are what you might call occasional locals. Apart from their ruddy skin and bracingly dissonant English shrieks of delight, my kids are right at home here. They tumble into the sea with pleasure each day. We peer around our calves for darting fish, collect smooth stones, and create mountains of sand. Just as fascinating is the social world that surrounds — senior citizens swimming nude; families chattering in French, German, Swedish; adolescent boys jockeying for power as they push each other off the dock. I can almost hear Amelia’s brain churning to digest it all.
We are blessed to share our time on Paros with a wide span of family. My half Greek husband spent his childhood summers splashing in the Aegean with his cousins. And now we get to watch our children do the same. Previously wracked with irrational fears of any and all ‘older boys’, Amelia follows her 10-year-old cousin everywhere he goes. Cautious, intensely private, and occasionally sour back home, Amelia is a jubilant thrill seeker here. Each morning, she jumps off a boat to bob in deep water with her relatives, suspended by a lifejacket. She races down the beach to climb on rocky outcroppings, all the while ensconced in imaginary dialogue that has her shipwrecked, orphaned, and giddily navigating survival. She throws herself into the arms of her grandparents with proclamations of love.
Each day the family gathers for mealtime. The hot weather and salt water combine to starve and exhaust us all, and Amelia is no exception. She devours her lunch and, on some days, her (all too often nap-allergic) body willingly downshifts into siesta mode. On the days she goes without sleep, Amelia shares mid-day ‘quiet time’ with a younger cousin, which amounts to little more than the exchange of giggles and silliness. But in a small, important way this 90 minutes of imposed rest — which at home would constitute boring punishment — here feels like delightful freedom.
Amelia’s closet ally in this world has always been her brother Eli. 21 months her junior, they have shared nearly everything in their young lives — friends, adventures, teachers, toys, fascinations. Now, with Amelia’s seventh year officially underway, the presence of sibling rivalry is all of a sudden deeply felt in our house. Lifting the two of them out of their familiar universe and dropping them into this vivid, fresh carnival has proved an incredible antidote to the discord. It would be false to say the antagonism has dissolved, but it has certainly diminished. Their intimate dynamics, normally offset only by their baby brother, are exploded on to a broader canvas here. In Greece, Amelia and Eli are champions of a shared adventure, united in their status as beloved, curious outsiders.
One afternoon, we ate lunch at a seaside taverna after exploring a nearby beach. The heat of the day still firmly upon us as we exited the restaurant, a decision was made to swim yet again in the azure waters that beckoned just ten meters away. Realizing she had shucked her wet bathing suit before the meal, Amelia opted to strip down to her underwear and swim. To her young mind, this small act of impropriety was nothing short of wild. Cackling with laughter as she climbed out of her sweaty clothes, Amelia led Eli into the sea. I watched as she reached out to steady his hand. For an instant, they were back in their cocoon of silliness together — intense comrades oblivious to the world around them. I grabbed my camera and snapped a photo. The resulting image was perfect, because that joyful moment — successfully captured — was perfect. In that split second, my own well formed vision of this place moved beyond the sensorial and aesthetic. I fell all the more in love with the island for its magical capacity to relax and transform not just my spirit, but the growing pains of my daughter.
I suspect I will know, and adore, that shot of Amelia and Eli for the rest of my life. “This,” I will tell them in years to come when they wonder aloud about the wet smiling faces shining down from the frame on the wall, “is Greece.”
In celebration of my multi-talented, unconventional husband, I offer today’s piece on housecleaning (or the lack thereof) on Role/Reboot —
spoonful of kale 