hustonhabitat
Reading Between the Lines
Someone said to me today that being a parent is about making appropriate associations and memories for children. Childhood is ostensibly a blur, he said, and so our job is to create traditions and visual, audio and olfactory memories that will bring happy moments to our kids when they are adults. The smell of cinnamon reminding us of grandma's house long after she has passed. The sound of Miles Davis' "All Blues" bringing back memories of Dad making breakfast. A little boy's LEGO t-shirt immediately transporting us back to that one summer when we built a go cart with our brother.
Some of what we do to create those memories is conscious (mom forcing us out of bed to see the first man on the moon), but if my personal experience is an indication of how the world operates, I'm quite sure the memories I have are not always the memories my parents thought they were creating. We were just living life, and things happened to us (whether our parents realized it or not) that are ingrained in our memories forever.
There was that time my aunt told me I had better be smart, because I was too ugly to marry rich. There was the bullying incident in the 9th grade, where I was beat up on the bus and my step-dad told me to "man up" and learn how to fight. There was the time I had to sit at the table and drink milk without throwing up (this would be before my parents found out about my allergy). And though I never addressed these issues with the people responsible for creating the memory, there were signs, at least in my mind, that I felt someone should have seen.
And so it is with the kids. On the one hand, we have to take them at face value and hope we've taught them to express themselves and how they are feeling. On the other, we fear we're not looking hard enough at what children are saying.
Last night we had some lessons about sharing and about interrupting and about paying attention to bad behavior. It was a conversation I figured was happening at dinner tables all over American. What was fascinating was not the content, but the kids' individual reaction to it. One kid was oblivious to any discussion that would involve his culpability -- he was without fault. One kid obsessed over the discussion and wanted to talk about the equities of being good, the punishments that might result from being bad, and the shortcomings of others. Two of the kids just nodded, signaled they understood, and tried to incorporate the lessons into the dinner that evening. And I caught myself wondering which of these children is going to remember this snippet as a really big deal, and whether any of the children were trying to tell me something I couldn't see.
My solution to most problems is a new lipstick and dessert. So I made an upside down cake and the boys had DANCE DANCE PARTY in the living room after their homework. I'm hoping that sugar and really bad disco music will be the memory they fall back on 20 years from now.
Reading Between the Lines
Someone said to me today that being a parent is about making appropriate associations and memories for children. Childhood is ostensibly a blur, he said, and so our job is to create traditions and visual, audio and olfactory memories that will bring happy moments to our kids when they are adults. The smell of cinnamon reminding us of grandma's house long after she has passed. The sound of Miles Davis' "All Blues" bringing back memories of Dad making breakfast. A little boy's LEGO t-shirt immediately transporting us back to that one summer when we built a go cart with our brother.
Some of what we do to create those memories is conscious (mom forcing us out of bed to see the first man on the moon), but if my personal experience is an indication of how the world operates, I'm quite sure the memories I have are not always the memories my parents thought they were creating. We were just living life, and things happened to us (whether our parents realized it or not) that are ingrained in our memories forever.
There was that time my aunt told me I had better be smart, because I was too ugly to marry rich. There was the bullying incident in the 9th grade, where I was beat up on the bus and my step-dad told me to "man up" and learn how to fight. There was the time I had to sit at the table and drink milk without throwing up (this would be before my parents found out about my allergy). And though I never addressed these issues with the people responsible for creating the memory, there were signs, at least in my mind, that I felt someone should have seen.
And so it is with the kids. On the one hand, we have to take them at face value and hope we've taught them to express themselves and how they are feeling. On the other, we fear we're not looking hard enough at what children are saying.
Last night we had some lessons about sharing and about interrupting and about paying attention to bad behavior. It was a conversation I figured was happening at dinner tables all over American. What was fascinating was not the content, but the kids' individual reaction to it. One kid was oblivious to any discussion that would involve his culpability -- he was without fault. One kid obsessed over the discussion and wanted to talk about the equities of being good, the punishments that might result from being bad, and the shortcomings of others. Two of the kids just nodded, signaled they understood, and tried to incorporate the lessons into the dinner that evening. And I caught myself wondering which of these children is going to remember this snippet as a really big deal, and whether any of the children were trying to tell me something I couldn't see.
My solution to most problems is a new lipstick and dessert. So I made an upside down cake and the boys had DANCE DANCE PARTY in the living room after their homework. I'm hoping that sugar and really bad disco music will be the memory they fall back on 20 years from now.