Beta told us she wanted to go to Jesolo, Italy with a girlfriend and her family this week so we let her. Ah, looks a little hazy at the moment. She’s 13, I’m worried, when she left I told her I’d be pissed if she fell into the hands of child p*rnographers, she gave me the “dad, not in front of everyone” look. Alpha calls her every day, yesterday Beta sounded bored. “I miss you guys,” she said.
She’s 13, and misses us! She prefers travel with us! She said so, explicitly. In Jesolo, they do the same thing every day, she said. Eat breakfast, go to the beach, eat lunch, go out on pedal boats, eat dinner at the same pizzeria, watch a movie, go for a stroll thru town.
I was corresponding with my cousin recently, and she called parenting a “crap shoot” and I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I don’t know about you, or your parents, but I haven’t the slightest fucking idea what I’m doing. In theory I try to emulate the good parts of what my own parents did, and avoid the bad parts, but they were flying by the seat of their pants themselves; in reality it’s a daily scramble to get the kids fed, off to school, then in bed again at night. If we’re lucky we do something interesting in between.
I’ve given up on experts and books. This summer I looked at two books on education and school styles. One supporting the “conservative” 3-Rs, back-to-the-basics approach, one the “liberal” non-graded blah blah approach, both with reams of statistics and anecdotal evidence backing them up. Who’s to say? So I just go by instinct, get rid of the TV, get the kids reading, pay attention to their school work.
It’s just instinct. When Beta brings home a good report card, though, I don’t know if it’s because of anything Alpha or I did, or just because Beta is smart. I never know if our parenting is optimal, or if more discipline would be good, or less; if more involvement would be better, or worse.
I think you can have too much involvement, see. I suspect that kids need a little time to themselves, even a little neglect. Too much peering over their shoulders, asking, “everything okay in there kids?” and driving them to a hundred organized after school activities… I think you can overdo that too.
But what do I know? Jack shit. So when Beta, as a teenager no less, tells us she prefers traveling with us, that’s decent feedback.
She comes home on Saturday; we can start fighting again then.
I think you left out the part about a sense of humor. I don’t have kids, but I think back on my friend’s dads who could really crack us up from time to time when it was appropriate (my dad rarely did). But we thought that was cool, and got what amounted to some much needed positive reinforcement. It sounds like you, in your insect-mode, have that great quality… while kids can be a tough audience sometimes, they figure out how special it is sooner or later. Maybe that’s what Beta meant?
I don’t think I met anyone with cool parents until I got to college… at least not that I realized. They were all just different shades of weird, growing up. Suburbia.
Yes, I left out humor. Humor is important. And being cool. In a humorous way. And when appropriate, as you mention. Good point.
There’s little doubt in my mind that you’re doing a great job. Which isn’t to say that it all will turn out great in the end, it’s just that it sounds to me like, well, there’s no other way to do it than to stumble your way through it because god knows, no one can tell you what to do. It’s all just instinct. And you’ve got insect, I mean instinct all right!
I don’t mean to be disingenuous, if that’s a word; I’m proud of the kids, obviously, and something seems to be going right. It just totally beats me what exactly that is. Life strikes me as, more than anything else, an incredible stroke of luck, or an incredible series of lucky breaks. On every level – molecular, personal, cosmic. [Marijuana flashback warning]. I mean, asteroids are missing us a dozen times a day, in one way or another, as we muddle through, finding, if not order, at least beauty in this chaos.