Too Bad About Your Kids...

Photo from haley8's photostream.

I have a friend that doesn't think very highly of my kids. It's in the little things she says and does.  "My son never used potty talk until he started hanging out with your son" or "God your kids are loud!" (as her son screams and shouts whilst being dragged to the breakfast table).  This all without noting her own child's shortcomings. She believes that her child can do no wrong and any negative issue is the fault of or the result of the influence of another, evil child. 

If he can't jump on the pogo-stick it must be broken or if toys are destroyed somebody else did it.  Her son has learned this attitude well, and blames others for everything.  This attitude shows itself over and over again is small subtle digs, that when added up over time, paint a pretty clear picture of her opinion of my kids.  I think her opinion formed in part because of her impression of me and my husband.  This opinion is based upon her judgements of the cleanliness of our house, our personal fashion, her impression of the way we live our lives, etc.  Her son is smarter than mine, reading novels in pre-school and mastering division by kindergarten.  In her mind she and her children are superior. 

I grew up poor.  Welfare, powdered-milk, always hungry, poor.  The kind of poor where we'd wait for the bi-annual welfare windfall that would propel us to the local discount retailer, to stock up on flammable pajamas and magically, shrinking jeans.  The kind where you go to the laundromat once per month to wash your well worn, filthy clothes.  I have fond memories of leaving the laundromat with black garbage bags filled with fresh smelling clothes, that I would ration, hoping to make them last, so I could spend the majority of the month reasonably clean. I remember girls in sixth grading taunting me when a cute, popular boy liked me, "How can you like a girl who wears the same clothes, every day?", they questioned.  It was obviously an unspeakable sin.  I had no idea how many times I should wear clothes, I just wore what was cleanest.

I like having that experience in my past even though it was really hard at the time.  When I look back on it, I realize how much I was judged by that, as if others around me were incapable of understanding that my financial standing had nothing to do with me, an unemployed kid.  I remember a friend, whose mother was always suspicious of me.  If a soda or goody bag were unaccounted for, she always accused me.  I came to expect it, and fear it.  I didn't quite know how to convince her that I was a good kid who had never stolen or taken anything, even though I didn't have much of my own.  I think I spent much of my childhood defending myself against a pre-judgement that as a child I could never possibly understand.  I knew that no matter how much good I did, people would accuse me first.  I realize now that their expectations of me and my potential were lower based upon my poverty.  It is also understandable, why I have become oversensitive to the judgements others might make about my own children.

To borrow a phrase, from Lenore Skenazy, I grew up pretty much as a "Free Range" kid.  Skenazy, who at one time in history, was described as the "Worst Mom in America", for letting her nine year old son ride on the New York subway, alone, hosts the website Freerangekids.wordpress.com and is the author of the book "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Kids the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry".  My life wasn't carefully orchestrated, it was chaotic.  At seven and nine my sister and I went everywhere, alone.  We had no after school activities, and didn't begin participating in athletics until high school.  Playdates didn't exist, we just walked down the street to the neighbor kids and I am pretty sure I didn't begin reading well, until fourth grade.

I find myself raising my own free range children, in the generation of "Overparenters" or what I like to call "Comparative Parents".  Don't get me wrong, I read with my kids and sign them up for soccer, but I am not as concerned with the tidiness of their rooms, whether their clothes match and whether some chocolate pudding might pool upon their faces for a few moments before it gets wiped away.  On a good day, my kids look like homeless children, evidence of the high kid-quality of their day. 

Overparenting is described by psychologists as the excessive micromanaging of our children's lives with the emphasis on achievement and is the pervasive parenting style of upper and middle class families today, according to Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, noted child psychologist.  Perfect Mom Culture tells us that for our children to be successful and for us to demonstrate exceptional parenting, our children must be sleeping through the night at three months, be fully potty trained by 12 months and have been awarded a full scholarship to Harvard by age five. Every moment must be scheduled with "social skill building" playdates, brain enhancing tutoring and athletic-prowess-building competition. The exact opposite of Free Range parenting, with hyperparenting, according to sociologist Annette Lareau, PhD, "Parents look at raising their children as a "project", something to be managed and organized and programmed.  Academic achievements and athletic accomplishments are valued ahead of relationships and character." 

This brings out the bragging-mom phenomenon, whereby a mom will share a story of her child's exceptional successes, noted to be far superior than those of your child, as she competes in the arena of one-up-man-ship  in the world of perfect mom-dom.   Through this comparison, the mom is asserting her status as a perfect mom, as you can clearly see by the exceptional successes of little Johnny! "There's a way in which an activity is more intense for the mother than it is even for the child," says Lareau. "And the competitive nature of activities is woven into the heart of the process." 

I am tired of other mom's judging my worthiness as a mom by how clean my house is, how well out-fitted my kids are, how many goals they scored in soccer or whether or not they have developed any new scientific theories lately.  There is mutiny afoot as parents begin to revolt against this unattainable parenting perfection.  Websites such as "Shut up About Your Perfect Kid", which embraces underachieving averageness or Honestbaby.com that dispels the myth that bottle-feeding your baby will shrink it's brain and sells baby shirts imprinted with slogans such as "Not Sleeping Through the Night!" and "I'll Walk When I Am Good and Ready!", have popped up in response to this changing mindset. In a 2009 Time Magazine article "Helicopter Parenting: The Backlash Against Overparenting", Nancy Gibbs explores the growing movement of letting kids be kids and reducing expectations.  She writes:

"The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the tree house but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. 


We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over..."


Recent uproar over the book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", by Amy Chua have highlighted the extreme approaches that can be brought to the experience of raising children.  In this book, America is criticized as being too soft on children, and that more structure and less tolerance for failure, paves the road to success in our children.  What gets lost in these debates is the influence of individualism of not only the child, but of the family experience.  Judgements occur when we believe our way of living or doing something is superior to the way someone else is doing it.  By constantly comparing our parenting style and our children's successes with other parents and other children, we are striving to reaffirm these judgements and assert ours and our children's superiority.  Is it me, or does that sound stupid?

Of course like any issue, a balance must be sought in our expectations of ourselves as parents and our children as prodigies.  Celebrating mediocrity or hiding failure behind the need to protect self-esteem, leads to an underachieving, entitled and disillusioned generation.  Whenever I see a "My child is an honor student.." bumper sticker, I cringe, knowing that likely this child has been falsely propped up and seldom allowed to fail or experience real challenge.  According to the Times article, studies show that letting kids be kids in all the awkward, knee skinning, potty talking, peeing in their pants ways is the "...essential protein in a child's emotional diet ... as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways".  Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute of Play, states that,"If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being in life, play is as fundamental as any other aspect.''


In reality, who gives a crap if my daughter brushes her hair everyday, if she has a kind, dreamy soul with an endless imagination?  So what if my son doesn't know all of his letter sounds in kindergarten, if he is sought after by his classmates as a friend?  Despite our free range upbringing, my sisters and I have all ended up just fine and each are very successful. Welfare put my mother through college where she studied computer science, and ended up teaching at the college herself. (I love being involved in political conversations that bash the welfare system, having actual personal experience with it). We all ended up with degrees and careers. It is with great delight that I travel back to my home town and visit the local McDonald's where one of the caddy sixth grade girls now works as the assistant manager. I hope she remembers her previous judgements as I order from her at the drive through window.