(something I wrote over a year ago and just re-found
and am posting)
We talked DNA this week. About height and skin color and the
girls’ mild fear of inheriting my ear dimensions. Some stuff you can change, and some things are just the cards you’re
dealt when your parents hooked up.
As parents it would be nice if children’s behavior and
personalities were pre-wired by our DNA. We could just put our parenting on
Autopilot. Feed them, pack them off to school, put them to bed. But luckily for
our children, their own little personalities aren’t pre-destined. They may look
like us, but they aren’t doomed to eventually become the boring parents they inherited.
So as parents: yes, we’re stuck with rolling with the
complicated punches of raising them. Even as each new successive punch messes
up the predictable pattern that made us feel like we were at last having some parenting successes.
Our early childhood parenting with them was more stressful, yes, but it was simpler
too. Keeping our babies close, protecting them from the things they are not
capable of understanding, despite sleep deprivation, was relatively easy. But
as their height notches rose on our kitchen wall, so too, the outside pressures
on our children accrued. So many outside influences beyond parental control
enter the frame. The girl’s school closing. The death of a family member.
Unemployment. Earthquakes and the threat thereof. Losing every single Under-6
soccer game we played this season. Did we win one game? I honestly can’t remember.
And then there’s that internal-sisterhood-dynamic. Havana and
Ily are both very different and at the same time indistinguishable. Ily currently likes to sleep-in, Havana
wakes with the sun. Yet Ily fights going to sleep and Havana treasures her
sleep. Ily, at times, wants to be treated like the youngest and at other times
demands to be treated as age-equal to her sister.
As sisters, they were born into two similar but different
worlds. Havana was born to parents who knew little to nothing about parenting,
at least that’s how we felt. Ily, as second child, faired better on that count.
But Ily never had the individual attention her older sister had. The childhood
bus don’t slow down and we're forced, as parents, to keep running after it. But two childhoods
running simultaneously, constantly influencing each other’s behavior, is more
complex than anything our imagination prepared us for.
These days, the main challenge to our parental patience is
the yelling. Havana yells now and then, but for her younger sister it’s simply
become common currency. Never in public, never with teachers, never with her friends. Only in the safety zone of her little family. Lucky us.
When your age dictates your secondary status in so many
ways, a loud voice can sometimes help close that gap for you. When your mom or
dad are running back and forth from fridge to stove to cupboard, then a whisper
for attention will be deferred by the greatest of parents. However, chopping
onions or raw chicken, can be dropped on the spot when that higher pitch of
yelling bounces off the living room walls and hits you like a fire alarm.
Havana, when she was five, yelled far less, but then the social climate for her was different. And when Ily is yelling, while the crime of yelling in
the court of family life is absolutely indefensible, the fault does not always
lay with the yeller. The blame doesn’t always fall squarely on the yellees
either. But we all suffer. Ily did not create her environment, she simply deals
with it with the best cards she’s been dealt and her small tightly stretched
vocal chords, in short, her scream, is still her strongest suit when in need of
attention.
Generally, if we have the energy, the most beneficial and
least damaging response is to look Ily in the eye and talk quietly to her. We might not get to the root of the issue, but we can at least do some good, quality, one-on-one. Bring everything down. So the chicken gets all dried out and rubbery and our flow
gets undone. Truth be known, this approach almost always
works. And everyone can deal with a crappy dinner. A little intense eye contact goes an amazingly long, long way.
However, the angelic parents we all hope to be, aren’t always
present in these small crises.
At other times, our endless patience is cornered, and the
blood pressure is tested. So, instead of talking it down, we increase the
decibels. It’s not our fault. We’ve got a spatula in one hand and an all-out
yelling match between sisters on the other. Or worse, one has caused bodily
injury to the other. So, naturally, we introduce the louder voice in the room.
Enough! Enough! That’s always followed by that horrible disparate silence of
those being shut up by someone bigger than them and our own silence as we face the fact that we are simply a bad parent. It feels like an awful use of hierarchical
oppression. Not the most wonderful way to bond with your children, but hey, it does happens.
Eventually the girls will outgrow the yelling. Both of them will learn to exercise more restraint. Cooperation will increase. And yelling will be
reserved for more important stuff. As parents, all we can do is throw down a
few rough behavioral guidelines in our words and in our deeds. And hopefully as the girls age, they
will learn how best to weather most of the emotional storms that come their
way.
The most important thing of all, methinks, is that when they need
to express strong feelings, they can always be angry to us, to their
parents. Even when it’s not about us. When they’re not yet ready or
comfortable yelling at the rest of the world, when their homework gets them
down, when they’re pissed at how things are rolling with their friends,
whatever the issue is, here at home, with mom and dad, this is the place they
can always come and yell. That door will always and forever be open to them.
And eventually our hearing will peter out anyway.
