To me, one of the greatest miracles we can perform as humans
is to lend another our belief in them until they find belief in themselves.
From the first moment a baby fusses, stirring restlessly, seeking a solution to
whatever bothers them—whether they’re wet, cold, lonely, gassy, or hungry—we
have a chance to share our confidence in them. As we soothe them with our
voices while changing, swaddling, cuddling, rubbing, and feeding them, we say,
“You’ve got this. You can hang on. You can speak up and be heard. You can get
what you need.” Eventually, they believe us.
The miracle, though never more fundamental, grows and grows
with each child. I’ve often said that I love beautiful new infant skin, so free
of scars and marks, but I also love toddler shins with all those first bumps,
bug bites, and booboos. The toddler skin belongs to someone who is out trying
things, running and falling, reaching and slipping, stepping in things that
they’ve never stepped in before. That skin belongs to a scientist, an inventor,
an explorer.
I love my children. I’d cheerfully sacrifice any body part
to save them from harm. I love my children. I want them to embrace the world
and their abilities. I want to say, “You can do it!” until they learn to say,
“I can do it!” Those two priorities take balancing. So, as our children and
their miraculous explorations have grown, I’ve had to redefine the concept of “harm.”
You see, I’m a resilient person. No brag; it’s just my go-to
answer for that eternal interview question, “What’s your greatest strength and
weakness?” I can handle anything. That’s great in natural disasters; not so
great when you put up with unnecessarily difficult human BS because you’re too
busy getting stuff done to notice that your life is getting worse and worse.
But that’s a blog for another time.
It’s not a stretch to say that my experiences as a child and
young adult honed whatever innate resilience I had; tough times made me tough.
So here lay a huge stumbling block for me as a mother: how would my beloved
children grow to be resilient without encountering some really shitty things in
life? How shitty do things have to be to create resilience? Do I have to seek
those things out or will they just come along in the course of life?
And that’s why I thought long and hard before intentionally
picking a definition of “harm.” I decided that I would protect my children from
permanent harm as much as possible. If they took a risk that might lead to
reparable harm, I’d offer suggestions but not veto their choice. So, in
playground terms, that meant if they could break their necks, crush their
skulls, or die, I would not let them climb there, try that, or hang on it. If
they might break their arms, I’d offer advice for being safe, I’d keep a
(subtle, distant) eye on them, but I’d leave it up to them.
This seems to have worked for us. S got to climb almost as
much as she wanted and Little A got to “try” almost as many crazy things as he
wanted. We worked it out. But, like any other parent in the new millennium, my
biggest parenting challenges have come from the outside.
I’ve been fortunate not to have any major confrontations or,
thank goodness, actual legal issues, but I’ve had my fair share of parents
calling from across the park, “Is this your little girl over here on the jungle
gym?” Though harmless enough in print, that question always carries heavy
criticism. If so, why are you over there?
I’m here minding my child. Yours is unattended. Yours is climbing without an
adult standing in arm’s reach.
When the kids were younger—and by that I mean that S did not
look like an adult or even a teen—I would not leave them alone in the car at
our local grocery store. Now, we’ve shopped there forever, the staff all know
the kids and recognize our car, it’s an incredibly safe area, we usually see
someone we know in the parking lot, and I can usually park within three spaces
of the door. So, one day, when they whined about wanting to stay, I was honest
with them.
“Listen, I know you can stay here and be safe. You’re plenty
old enough. But. I also don’t want to
have to deal with a stranger calling the police because that stranger thinks
you’ve been abandoned in a car. I just want to get some cereal and go home, so
you’re coming in with me.”
That little speech became a point of pride with them. They’d
laugh about it and show off by repeating it for family friends. Clearly, my
spur-of-the-moment, honest answer to their whining gave them confidence. I had
no idea how happy I would be that I’d made that speech, but, from then on, I
referred to it every time I asked them to come in the store. It’s fallen out of
use lately; S has gotten taller than me and Little A has about two inches to
go. Now I’m *almost* certain no one would call child services on me for leaving
them. Almost.
I recently read this article, full of stories where someone
did call the police. It makes me sad, not just because the stories illustrate
the reasons behind my decisions not to leave my children
alone in a safe
parking lot, but also because they define the cause of the extremely fragile
mental state of many rising and young adults today.
I’ll never forget seeing a work-study student in the costume
shop of a prestigious private college burst into inconsolable tears after
sewing a seam wrong. Anyone who sews has done it—many, many times. Seams go
wrong. The bobbin runs out or the tension’s wrong, another piece of fabric gets
pulled in or you just don’t end up where you need to be. It’s just thread. You
rip the seam and sew it again. Yes, it’s frustrating and it can be the icing on
a crappy-day cake, but if you’re a twenty-year-old who has been sewing several
days a week for a whole school year, sobbing seems like a reaction out of
proportion to the problem.
That happened twenty years ago. I won’t even try to link to
all the articles about lack of resilience in college or the workplace since
then. They are ubiquitous and depressing. Young adults don’t know how to get to
work or class on time, speak to a professor or boss, talk to a roommate, handle
constructive criticism—it’s almost like they’ve never developed the skills to
handle life alone.
Notice that phrase I used above. I wrote “don’t know how to”
rather than “can’t” because they can. They’ve just never done it. They’ve never
done anything alone. No one ever said, “You can do it.” No one believed in
them, over and over, until they did do it, until they could say, “I can do it!”
Believe me, I have more to say on letting kids do stuff alone--look for Part II soon--but I still can't really explain how this works. I just hope folks out there will consider believing in others, especially children. It's hard to imagine in this world, but sometimes believing makes it real.
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| Sure the tree would fall, I said nothing. And she did it! |
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