What We Do (and Don’t) Control As Parents

I got into a heated discussion this week with a tiger mother. She was angry. Angry about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter. Or rather, about the emotions the book brought out in her. I always tell people, “The book isn’t about you. It’s about me.”

But no one ever believes this. They think they see themselves reflected in my words. But the reflection they’re seeing is distorted by their own emotions and issues over which I have no idea and no control.

“My kids and I fight a lot. But it’s okay, because in the end, no matter what happens, we make up,” this mother told me.

“Okay,” I said. This is what Amy Chua says in her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,  and on her PR tours: Hey, there’s cuddling. There are good times, too.

This mother wasn’t satisfied.  “We’re stronger from the fighting.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But you think fighting is bad. You don’t fight with your kids.”

“No. I don’t.” I was thinking about a blog I’d read recently which had said, I always found a “kid whispering” style worked best for me, i.e treat them as you would like them to be.

I don’t want my kids to be screamers.  I don’t want them to be angry and controlling aggressive people. I never, ever want them to link anger with love.

“So you think I’m wrong to fight with them,” the mother said.

I gave up. She knew what I thought. She’d read Tiger Daughter:

“It’s a terrifying fact of parenting: we have no idea which moments stick and which go by. We can’t choose the moments that our kids will internalize. So how do we act?”

We act as we want them to be. We can’t assume they forgive and forget the screaming just because afterward there’s cuddling. In fact, it’s much more likely that the cuddling after the screaming will have them forever associating love with anger.

Linking these emotions can be so destructive. First, because it’s a sick perversion of love. Second, because we can’t love ourselves unless we are also against ourselves.

But it wasn’t this mother’s fault. I didn’t blame her. A mother who justifies emotional violence because it’s followed by increased love is probably re-enacting a disturbing, destructive pattern from her own childhood.

Anyway, looking into a mirror is hard. It’s much easier to be mad at other people.

That is, after all, what screaming at kids is all about.

The Year of the Iguana: Finding Childcare in the Real World

When we unexpectedly moved to California, I had to find my three-year-old daughter Hana childcare quick. So I did all the right things: I researched, called government agencies, got lots of recommendations. Then, after about 272 phone calls, my daughter was on 272 waitlists. Obviously, we were in trouble.

“Oh, we signed Ashley up just as soon as we knew we were pregnant!” I heard similar refrains again and again. How did parents know to do this? How would parents know that a school is right for a child who they haven’t even met yet? A child who doesn’t yet have specific needs and desires all his own? A child who hasn’t yet formed toes?

It all got me to thinking: is it possible that mommy and daddy don’t always know best?

Anyway, for us these were idle questions. I had no choice; all the classes were full.

Well, not all the classes.

When I called the lizard school and they told me they had a space, I almost hung up. A space? The place was obviously littered with crack vials and jagged glass. But I was desperate, so I visited the classroom anyway.

Instantly, I understood.

There he was, Iggy the Iguana: head bobbing, eyes beady, muscular tail swishing back and forth across the bare floor with a muted whoosh (a sound that still gives me the heebie-jeebies to this day). I wanted to grab Hana and run. But she was entranced. Peter, the head teacher, talked to her a long time about scales and claws and other such monstrosities. She listened intently as she stared at this magical man.

She knew then what it took me an entire year to figure out: she had found the perfect nursery school.

Now, if I had had a choice, I would have marched her to a Montessori school where she would have learned to wipe the tables and to feed a proper, respectable bunny. Or sent her to a Waldorf classroom, where she would have eaten organic millet and occupied herself with beautifully-crafted, wooden playthings. But since I had no choice, I just let go and let her decide. This place was safe (apparently, healthy lizards are as safe as bunnies). It was clean (in a non-traditional, non-tidy kind of way). And, as the teacher himself would surely have said, it had a good vibe.

For better or for worse, we were in.

Of course, now that a decision was made, the forms signed, the check written, I was wracked with doubt. This school had two, three, four and five year olds. Was that too much for my little princess? This school had no “academic” learning whatsoever. Would my daughter fall woefully behind?  The head teacher was a man! (A man!) Anxiety filled my early A.M. hours as I stared at the ceiling and tossed in my bed.

Meanwhile, here’s what my daughter was thinking: Wow!  They have a sandbox! I love sandboxes. I’m going to play in the sandbox all day. I won’t ever go home. Sand! Sand! Sand! Sand!

How do I know that? Because that’s exactly what she did for her first two weeks at school. School is perhaps a pretty loose term for what this place was–the kids chose their own activities and only had to break for snack and lunch–and so she blissfully built castles and dug holes and filled buckets. In my worry about petty, niggling details, I had lost the big picture: Was Hana happy there? Yes. The school had a sandbox.

All was well.

In fact, it was more than well. It was impossibly wonderful. Peter, the head teacher, was a national treasure. Sure, I still had to brace myself for the inevitable mess the classroom was reduced to every day. And I was a little troubled by the fact that my daughter’s relationship with her shoes became a purely abstract one, as she was never actually required to wear any. Eventually, we just stopped bringing shoes altogether.

Friends would ask me, a little concerned, what theory her school followed. Whole-child? Waldorf? Montessori? You know, all that grown-up stuff. Well, I’d stammer, I guess it’s more like–I’d search desperately for a way to explain it. Then, I’d think about the bumper sticker on Peter’s jeep. No, not the Grateful Dead one or the “I’d rather be in Waikiki” one, but the one that said something about committing random acts of kindness and beauty. I guess that pretty well summed it up.

Now I’m not saying that I let my children make all the decisions around here. We still eat dinner before dessert (most of the time) and we still go to bed at a reasonable hour (sort of). But whenever I hear stories of unhappy kids and unhappy parents in child care situations that just don’t sound quite right, I wonder if the parents have chosen childcare that makes them happy, or childcare that makes their kids happy.

And I tell them about Iggy and our blissful year of the lizard.

Playdates and Mommy Etiquette

            “Oh, and we prefer Daphne not to have sugar or watch TV,” Daphne’s mother called gaily, as she waved good-bye to her six-year-old daughter who was at our house for her first playdate.

“Then, I suppose liquor and gambling are out too?” I called after the woman, who stopped in her tracks.

Neither of us smiled.

Now, I’m not a mean person, but I thought Daphne’s mother was out of line. Okay, suppose we do spend our afternoons stuffing ourselves with candy bars until we fall into a sugar-induced coma in front of the TV? Will Daphne never recover? Daphne and my daughter had chosen to be friends. Daphne’s mother has seen my daughter at school, and she’s not a sugar-crazed maniac.  Our home life, which our daughter cannot escape day-in-and-day out, has not disfigured her. Surely, whatever horrors we perpetrate on her daughter for the next two hours will be okay in the end.

Most of my friends disagreed.

“Oh, I always make clear the parameters of a playdate way before-hand. The only thing rude about that woman was that she waited until the last moment,” one friend told me.

“I never leave my child for the first playdate. I like to see what goes on,” another friend admitted.

I was horrified.  I would never presume to dictate what other people can do in their own homes. If I think a house in unsafe, my child won’t go there. If I think a house filled with cartoons and candy, I shrug my shoulders and let my daughter experience for herself how our life differs from theirs. Variety is the spice of life. It’s a learning opportunity.

Spice, fine, my friends tell me. Just no sugar, TV, guns, rough-housing–the list goes on and on.

What do you think? Is it okay to list rules like this? Or does it cross a line?

Battle Hymn of the Mother of a Tiger

Folks have been asking me, did I really write a battle hymn, or was I using the title, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter, as a metaphor?

Yeah, I wrote one. (It’s in the key of G major.) Of course, it’s more a “Battle Hymn of the Mother of a Tiger.” But that made a crappy title for a book, don’t you think?

Here is the beginning of it. Enjoy!

Battle Hymn of the Mother of a Tiger

People wonder how American parents raise such innovative, creative, kick-butt children. What is it that these parents do to create kids with the courage to follow their dreams? Kids who defy the word “stereotype”? Kids capable of seeing beyond the outdated, conventional clichés—Harvard, violin, doctor, lawyer—and into a future that most parents are too old, tradition-bound, and small-minded to even imagine? Well, I can tell you, because I know. Here are a few things that my children, Hana and Isaiah, are never allowed to do:

1) Miss an episode of The Office.

2) Waste their time on extracurricular activities that they don’t love.

3) Pass up important family or social events because they put their own personal enrichment first.

4) Think that they’re better than other kids because of their grades. An “A” can mean excellent, but it can also stand for “asshole.”

5) Brag about awards. The only achievements that matter in the end don’t get awards (character, kindness, compassion, courage, friendship).

I’m using the term “American parents” loosely. Anyone who embraces the Western values of individuality, creativity, and questioning of authority can be American in my book. But let’s face it, most people with these values live in the West.

Specifically, in America.

Quite a few of them live in my house…

When you write a parenting book…

Buy it now at Amazon.com

 

Writing a parenting book has been an exciting adventure. And a surprising one.

One of the biggest surprises has been who our competition is. I thought I’d be up against psychologists. I thought I’d be up against PhDs.

No.

It’s much, much worse than that.

We’re up against Tori Spelling.

Yep, that’s right, Tori Spelling. She of 90210 fame (if you’re of an *ahem* certain age).  It seems that Tori Spelling has written not one but TWO parenting books.

 

The first of Tori’s books is called uncharted terriTORI.  I have no idea what this means, but it’s currently #12 on Amazon.com’s top mothering books. Her second book is called MOMMYWOOD.  You have to see this one to believe it:

 

Still don’t believe it?

Me neither.

In any case, BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER DAUGHTER has gone as high as #9 on the Amazon.com Motherhood list, but Tori–damn her and her green bubble dress!–keeps beating us back.

Am I going to have to read her book(s)?

Please, say it ain’t so!