This post is a bit of a digression from the usual Mexico-related experiences. Then again, without some of the formative experiences my mom provided for me, I probably wouldn't be here to begin with. Happy Mothers' Day, Mom, and the same to all you other mothers out there!
I came across a series of articles on Slate.com the other day called The Idle Parent, excerpts from the book of the same name by Tom Hodgkinson. I was intrigued by the title, so I clicked, and spent the next 30 minutes laughing so hard that grapefruit juice came out of my nose. Hodgkinson champions the notion of parents doing whatever they want, in order to give kids the freedom to learn from their own mistakes. His examples include saying yes to all your kids’ requests, so that they tire of you and leave you alone; staying home and never taking them to amusement parks; allowing your pets to parent for you; and laying in bed all day with a hangover. This method of parenting, Hodgkinson claims, leads to kids who are “strong, bold, fearless, and much in demand wherever they go!”
The Idle Parent series reminded me of a recent New York Times article about the difficult decisions facing the parents of New York City kindergarteners. The recession is affecting everyone, it seems, and so parents who had always assumed they’d send their kids to private school are now re-thinking things. The New York City public school system, however, requires you to send your children to schools in the district in which you live. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Some parents, convinced that the right or wrong kindergarten will determine their children’s entire educational future, are establishing fake residences in other parts of the city. Other (more law-abiding) parents are attempting to move to more desirable school districts, even if it means selling their homes for far less than they’re worth, and squeezing entire families into tiny apartments.
All this for the right kindergarten, with the assumption that, with the right kindergarten, one’s child will most assuredly be admitted to Harvard.
I must admit, I prefer the notion of Idle Parenting to the reality of the New York City kindergarteners. These polar opposite parenting methods have gotten me thinking about my own upbringing. I have fond memories of growing up, in part because my parents left me – and my siblings, for that matter – to our own defenses on a fairly regular basis. My childhood wasn’t inundated with Baby Einstein videos, I wasn’t forced to do foreign-language flash cards when I was 2 (but I nannied for that poor child), and apart from the fact that I felt obligated to play the French horn because my mom had written it on a wish list in my baby book while I was still in utero, I didn’t feel like my parents imposed their unfulfilled dreams into my decision-making.
My parents were, for the most part, Idle Parents, and I never felt the kind of pressure that these New York City kindergarteners must feel.
Except, that is, for one occasion.
I am 5 years old. I don’t know it yet, but it’s the day before Kindergarten Roundup – the day when parents take their up-and-coming kindergarteners to school for a day of testing, to determine which classroom will be theirs, and to determine – as some parents believe – their entire educational future.
I don’t know anything about Kindergarten Roundup, but I know that something is up. My mom is acting funny. Usually, when I play outside, I don’t have my parents’ undivided attention. Usually, they’ll help me start a sand castle, and then they’ll rake some leaves. Usually, they’ll give me a couple pushes on the swing, and then they’ll pull some weeds. Usually, they’re (relatively) Idle Parents. Today, however, I have become a New York City kindergartener. Today, I have my mom’s undivided attention.
Today, my mom is determined to teach me how to skip.
I’m confused. I’d really rather play in the sandbox, and I don’t understand what’s so damn important about skipping in the first place. I don’t understand that skipping is one of the skills that will be tested at the Kindergarten Roundup. I don’t understand the gravity of the situation. I don’t understand, as my mother does, that my entire educational future hangs in the balance. But, stereotypically-people-pleasing oldest child that I am, I’m willing to give it a go.
My mom and I give it a go all freakin’ afternoon. It becomes clear that I am genetically predisposed to galloping, rather than skipping, and no amount of “Step-hop! Step-hop!” is going to change this. We have our moments: a couple of times, in my attempts to gallop even better, I accidentally skip without realizing it. We celebrate, I try again, and I eventually start to get the hang of it.
The next morning, in what I now recognize as the first of many pre-exam cramming sessions, my mom and I go outside for one last practice round. “Step-hop! Step-hop!” I think I’ve got it, and we pile into the car. My mom is clearly nervous about something; I’m just excited about the McDonald’s orange drink that inevitably goes along with events held in gymnasiums.
In the gymnasium, we gather with all the other 5-year-olds and their parents. A smiley woman calls my name, and my mom and I set down our paper cups of orange drink to follow her. She leads us to a room with a balance beam, a low table with wooden blocks in different shapes and colors, and a large open space in the middle. The smiley woman and I sit down together at the table, and I quickly identify all the shapes and colors. My mom lets out a long breath that neither one of us realized she’d been holding, and says, “Great job, honey!”
I smile at her, but I’m confused again. We play with blocks at home all the time, but it’s never a big deal. My mom is smiling, but the tension is thick. Next, the smiley woman asks me to take my shoes off, and to walk from one end of the balance beam to the other. Understanding that this must be more important than balancing on the yellow curb at home (the smiley woman has a clipboard, after all), I concentrate very hard, and make it all the way to the end without falling off.
“Yeah!” my mom shouts, so suddenly that, had I still been on the balance beam, I probably would’ve fallen off. “Great job, honey!” I grin and duck my head, grateful for the praise, even if I still don’t understand what we’re doing in this room with the smiley woman and her clipboard.
“Thank you very much for coming in today,” says the smiley woman, as I struggle to put my shoes back on. I stand up, assuming that those words indicate the end of this bizarre play date. “Oh, one last thing,” the smiley woman remembers. “Can you skip across the room for me, sweetheart?”
My mom sucks in her breath. My heart is beating in my throat, and I can’t remember “Step-hop!” I must have stood there for a minute, because my mom said, “Go ahead, Andrea, skip across!”
So I did. I skipped with all the gusto I could muster. I skipped right up to the smiley woman’s clipboard, where she looked at me, looked at my mom, and scribbled some notes. I turned around to see my mom looking nervously at the smiley woman (who wasn’t so smiley anymore), and then I knew – I had done it wrong. I had forgotten the “Step-hop,” and I had galloped across the room.
“Mom?” I ask, aware that I have made a mistake, and aware that the tension has thickened. But then, something changes. My mom stops looking at the woman’s clipboard, and looks right at me. A big, huge smile spreads across her face, and she says, “Great job, honey. You did a great job.”
And that’s all it took. The tension in the room was gone. The smiley woman smiled again, held the door open for us, and my mom and I went to McDonald’s for a happy meal.
It turns out that I needed Idle Parents more than I needed to be a New York City kindergartener. My mom and I had tried on the latter, and it didn’t fit either one of us very well. So the smiley woman couldn’t check all the boxes on her clipboard – so what? I may not be “strong, bold, fearless, and much in demand wherever I go,” but I didn’t turn out to be a total idiot – I can cook a pizza; I can hold down a job.
25 years later, there’s a lot more pressure to conform; a lot more pressure to be perfect. I don’t envy those New York City kindergarteners. But I do admire my mom – and my dad, for that matter – for recognizing the value in being (relatively) Idle Parents, and for trusting themselves enough to let me do my own thing.
My mom was right. I galloped my little ass off in that room, and I did a great job. I still hate to skip, to this day. Clipboards don’t do much for me, either.
I came across a series of articles on Slate.com the other day called The Idle Parent, excerpts from the book of the same name by Tom Hodgkinson. I was intrigued by the title, so I clicked, and spent the next 30 minutes laughing so hard that grapefruit juice came out of my nose. Hodgkinson champions the notion of parents doing whatever they want, in order to give kids the freedom to learn from their own mistakes. His examples include saying yes to all your kids’ requests, so that they tire of you and leave you alone; staying home and never taking them to amusement parks; allowing your pets to parent for you; and laying in bed all day with a hangover. This method of parenting, Hodgkinson claims, leads to kids who are “strong, bold, fearless, and much in demand wherever they go!”
The Idle Parent series reminded me of a recent New York Times article about the difficult decisions facing the parents of New York City kindergarteners. The recession is affecting everyone, it seems, and so parents who had always assumed they’d send their kids to private school are now re-thinking things. The New York City public school system, however, requires you to send your children to schools in the district in which you live. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Some parents, convinced that the right or wrong kindergarten will determine their children’s entire educational future, are establishing fake residences in other parts of the city. Other (more law-abiding) parents are attempting to move to more desirable school districts, even if it means selling their homes for far less than they’re worth, and squeezing entire families into tiny apartments.
All this for the right kindergarten, with the assumption that, with the right kindergarten, one’s child will most assuredly be admitted to Harvard.
I must admit, I prefer the notion of Idle Parenting to the reality of the New York City kindergarteners. These polar opposite parenting methods have gotten me thinking about my own upbringing. I have fond memories of growing up, in part because my parents left me – and my siblings, for that matter – to our own defenses on a fairly regular basis. My childhood wasn’t inundated with Baby Einstein videos, I wasn’t forced to do foreign-language flash cards when I was 2 (but I nannied for that poor child), and apart from the fact that I felt obligated to play the French horn because my mom had written it on a wish list in my baby book while I was still in utero, I didn’t feel like my parents imposed their unfulfilled dreams into my decision-making.
My parents were, for the most part, Idle Parents, and I never felt the kind of pressure that these New York City kindergarteners must feel.
Except, that is, for one occasion.
I am 5 years old. I don’t know it yet, but it’s the day before Kindergarten Roundup – the day when parents take their up-and-coming kindergarteners to school for a day of testing, to determine which classroom will be theirs, and to determine – as some parents believe – their entire educational future.
I don’t know anything about Kindergarten Roundup, but I know that something is up. My mom is acting funny. Usually, when I play outside, I don’t have my parents’ undivided attention. Usually, they’ll help me start a sand castle, and then they’ll rake some leaves. Usually, they’ll give me a couple pushes on the swing, and then they’ll pull some weeds. Usually, they’re (relatively) Idle Parents. Today, however, I have become a New York City kindergartener. Today, I have my mom’s undivided attention.
Today, my mom is determined to teach me how to skip.
I’m confused. I’d really rather play in the sandbox, and I don’t understand what’s so damn important about skipping in the first place. I don’t understand that skipping is one of the skills that will be tested at the Kindergarten Roundup. I don’t understand the gravity of the situation. I don’t understand, as my mother does, that my entire educational future hangs in the balance. But, stereotypically-people-pleasing oldest child that I am, I’m willing to give it a go.
My mom and I give it a go all freakin’ afternoon. It becomes clear that I am genetically predisposed to galloping, rather than skipping, and no amount of “Step-hop! Step-hop!” is going to change this. We have our moments: a couple of times, in my attempts to gallop even better, I accidentally skip without realizing it. We celebrate, I try again, and I eventually start to get the hang of it.
The next morning, in what I now recognize as the first of many pre-exam cramming sessions, my mom and I go outside for one last practice round. “Step-hop! Step-hop!” I think I’ve got it, and we pile into the car. My mom is clearly nervous about something; I’m just excited about the McDonald’s orange drink that inevitably goes along with events held in gymnasiums.
In the gymnasium, we gather with all the other 5-year-olds and their parents. A smiley woman calls my name, and my mom and I set down our paper cups of orange drink to follow her. She leads us to a room with a balance beam, a low table with wooden blocks in different shapes and colors, and a large open space in the middle. The smiley woman and I sit down together at the table, and I quickly identify all the shapes and colors. My mom lets out a long breath that neither one of us realized she’d been holding, and says, “Great job, honey!”
I smile at her, but I’m confused again. We play with blocks at home all the time, but it’s never a big deal. My mom is smiling, but the tension is thick. Next, the smiley woman asks me to take my shoes off, and to walk from one end of the balance beam to the other. Understanding that this must be more important than balancing on the yellow curb at home (the smiley woman has a clipboard, after all), I concentrate very hard, and make it all the way to the end without falling off.
“Yeah!” my mom shouts, so suddenly that, had I still been on the balance beam, I probably would’ve fallen off. “Great job, honey!” I grin and duck my head, grateful for the praise, even if I still don’t understand what we’re doing in this room with the smiley woman and her clipboard.
“Thank you very much for coming in today,” says the smiley woman, as I struggle to put my shoes back on. I stand up, assuming that those words indicate the end of this bizarre play date. “Oh, one last thing,” the smiley woman remembers. “Can you skip across the room for me, sweetheart?”
My mom sucks in her breath. My heart is beating in my throat, and I can’t remember “Step-hop!” I must have stood there for a minute, because my mom said, “Go ahead, Andrea, skip across!”
So I did. I skipped with all the gusto I could muster. I skipped right up to the smiley woman’s clipboard, where she looked at me, looked at my mom, and scribbled some notes. I turned around to see my mom looking nervously at the smiley woman (who wasn’t so smiley anymore), and then I knew – I had done it wrong. I had forgotten the “Step-hop,” and I had galloped across the room.
“Mom?” I ask, aware that I have made a mistake, and aware that the tension has thickened. But then, something changes. My mom stops looking at the woman’s clipboard, and looks right at me. A big, huge smile spreads across her face, and she says, “Great job, honey. You did a great job.”
And that’s all it took. The tension in the room was gone. The smiley woman smiled again, held the door open for us, and my mom and I went to McDonald’s for a happy meal.
It turns out that I needed Idle Parents more than I needed to be a New York City kindergartener. My mom and I had tried on the latter, and it didn’t fit either one of us very well. So the smiley woman couldn’t check all the boxes on her clipboard – so what? I may not be “strong, bold, fearless, and much in demand wherever I go,” but I didn’t turn out to be a total idiot – I can cook a pizza; I can hold down a job.
25 years later, there’s a lot more pressure to conform; a lot more pressure to be perfect. I don’t envy those New York City kindergarteners. But I do admire my mom – and my dad, for that matter – for recognizing the value in being (relatively) Idle Parents, and for trusting themselves enough to let me do my own thing.
My mom was right. I galloped my little ass off in that room, and I did a great job. I still hate to skip, to this day. Clipboards don’t do much for me, either.
Waiting for bus with my mom, on my first day of kindergarten. (Clearly, we both survived the Kindergarten Roundup, although the bus ride and its aftermath are the makings of an entirely different blog post.)
1 comments:
Andrea,
I wish I had known about this “Idle Parent” thing when you kids were in junior high. How many Sundays were there where I was parked in the La-Z-Boy, beer in hand, six hours of football waiting to be watched? You guys all thought I was just goofing off, when, as it turns out, I was Parenting. And if I asked one of you to go to the fridge and bring me another beer (“… and don’t shake the can!”), I wasn’t just being lazy. I was instilling within you a sense of being “...strong, bold, fearless, and much in demand wherever [you] go” – as long as wherever you go happens to be to work in a tavern.
So what you may have seen as a slug wasting precious oxygen was, in reality, a pioneer, a visionary, a man well ahead of his time. How do we know this? Well, some guy who wrote a book said so. Yes, it has taken 25 years for my methods to be fully appreciated. But we men of genius are accustomed to that.
Love,
Dad
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