My Mother's Battle Hymn

There is a controversial article about parenting at The Wall Street Journal.

I admire this woman. First of all, she is going to get a lot of hate mail. Secondly, she is going to be selling a lot of books! (As someone who is still debating writing a book, I admire this fact tremendously. I pre-ordered the book, and it will be a work expense. I love my job, but you know that already.)

Amy's battle hymn is pretty much my mother's battle hymn. I had very few play dates as a kid, although it had more to do with the fact that my dad could not stand noisy children, and well, he already had plenty of those, and there was no point getting more of them over to his house. We weren't allowed sleepovers, again, less to do with any child rearing debate but more to do with the fact that my parents already knew adults could very easily become molesters.

I was made to practice a lot of piano and violin, and I was not allowed to have a boyfriend in high school. There was much resentment about the above facts. I had written lots of hate mail toward my parents in 7th grade and exchanged them with a friend. Her dad found them, and essentially banned her from being my friend, because I was a bad influence. (The topic of not having a boyfriend deserves many, many posts for later.)

Not even that long ago, I told some friends that I hated all those hours of practice and even now, I don't like music all that much. So I think I lied. I love music, I have always loved music. What I hated, was that I had to practice until very late, and because I was exhausted, I spent most of it crying, which then made me hate music itself. As a mother of two children who head off to bed at 7:30 pm, I am finally aware of this fact: How on earth did I stay awake to practice until 9 pm everyday? No wonder I was always crying, just like A&Z cry when they are too tired to do bath time, I was just too tired to think, to practice, to open my eyes.

I do have memories of mastering a sonatina, before my sister was even born (she was 7 years my junior, so I was probably about 6) and how good it felt. It was so cool to have perfect pitch which made music classes a breeze, and that four hours of practicing over the summer? Sure it was repetitive, and I imagined all these kids having so much fun doing something else, anything else, but the first hour was all scales and exercises, the second hour was all Baroque (Bach), the third hour was all Classical (Mozart and Beethoven), the fourth hour was for all other random composers.

Violin, on the other hand, was really just miserable. While I was pretty good at it (perfect pitch helped), I still didn't sound all that great. (Probably didn't help that the teacher chain smoked and was kinda inappropriate...another post for another time.) Eventually, it became clear that it was not meant to be.

As a mother now, I feel this polarity of parenting: Assume A&Z do not know what is good for them, and make them to stuff that is 'good for them', or, A&Z in fact know what they want and just let them be. (Perhaps, with all this information overload, this is the new mommy war. The debate about working for pay vs. working at home is so passe, the new fight is about make your child do stuff or let the child lead you!)

It would be foolish to say this is only one way. Every family is different and every child is different. This is what works for us.

I do think it is my job to teach them stuff: how to obey, how to wipe poop off their butts, how to add, subtract, how to problem solve, how to get along, and most of all, how to find out what you are good at. In teaching them, sometimes it takes some prodding/forcing/encouraging. Some kids never want to learn the multiplication table, but we make them, don't we?

Before Aidan started kindergarten, I held steadfastly to the 'golden rule', given to me by a colleague, a child psychiatrist. "Don't ever, ever, let them do more than two activities outside of school. They will be overly stretched." It made perfect sense to me. Until Aidan started kindergarten. Let's face it, our educational system is A JOKE. Aidan attends a top notch school, I adore his teachers, but really, in a class of 24, he isn't learning as much as he can. As for my colleague, I still like him, but because he doesn't have kids, what does he know about raising kids? He knows about pathologies, not your typical, healthy kid.

These days, he goes to a Chinese after school program daily, he works on his Kumon worksheets daily before breakfast, and has a Kumon session at the center on Tuesdays, there is ice skating lessons on Wednesdays, and in a few weeks, piano lessons will be added.

Is it a lot? Yes. Can he do it? Yes. Have I had to make him do his Kumon in the beginning? Yes, and now, he wakes up and races to the table to finish his worksheets. For Aidan, who has a pretty easy going personality and is just so fast at everything he needs to do, this is manageable. Will he have all this 'free' time later for these activities? Probably not. We must seize the day and challenge him now.

I also see that we are working on obedience with these activities: These are good things for you, and you must try these things, we are making you because we love you, and you need to obey.

Of course, this won't be our schedule forever. He will probably do Kumon for a very long time, since Grandpa runs the local Kumon center and picks him up and all. He will probably stop Chinese lessons by 6th grade, when he will be able to walk home on his own. Ice skating lessons will eventually turn into ice hockey league, which, dear God, has practices at 5 am. As for piano, the reason to do it is to develop an appreciation for music. When he reads music and can play at the level of sonatinas, he will then be free to choose an instrument. Already, he is talking about learning either guitar or trombone. Sure, he can just go learn guitar at some point, but it is come so much more easily if he can read music and hear the chords that he needs to play.

Sometime this week, I am going to write about the implications of being this kind of mommy.