More Reflections on Parenting

As I was going to sleep last night, thinking, as usual, about my children, the imagery of this poem by Kahlil Gibran came to mind, and I thought I'd post it on my blog (primarily in reference to my dilemma of two days ago...it often takes me a while to resolve something in my mind, or even express it.) I liked the analogy represented in the poem - it has stayed with me since I first read it:

'On Parenting' by Kahlil Gibran

...

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you,

For life goes not backward

nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees not the mark upon the path of the infinite

and he bends you with his might that his arrow

might go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be

for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies,

so he loves also the bow that is stable.

Family Summer Reading

My son Tom recently 'complained' that I do not read to him. (He was apparently too young when I did read to him to remember now that I used to read to him.)

This gnawed at me. I always envisioned being the kind of mother who read to her children. Over the years I've started many books with them (Five Little Peppers and How they Grew, Cheaper by the Dozen, Charlotte's Web, Treasure Island...) only to abandon them when interest began to wane. I sulked for a couple of weeks, then went to the bookstore to buy a book I have always wanted to read: The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne. I will be reading this book aloud to my children in command performance fashion every evening until we've finished it.

We started reading about Pooh's adventures last night. Tom, age 16, the one who complained that I never read to him, tried to get out of it. "You have to listen," I said. "I can't have you growing up thinking I never read to you!" So he lounged on the sofa while Abby crocheted, Scott and Emily sat quietly, and I read.

Tom interrupted after the first page or two to complain about the writer's style, but I assured him the book is a classic. A few pages after that, we all chuckled at something Pooh said to Piglet. I held the book open to show them pictures in the beam of lamplight and we were all charmed. So far, so good. We're all looking forward to Chapter Two this evening.

So my message to any mothers out there who fear they've missed the boat on reading to their children: it's never too late. (It's certainly easier if they're still in the house, however.) The main thing for me is sharing my love of literature with them and teaching them that books can be as entertaining as video games and movies, even more so.

And I want to put in a plug for listening to books on tape or CD. On a fantastic car trip from Utah to Hannibal, Mo. in 2000 we listened to Tom Sawyer going and Huck Finn coming home. I could never have read it as well as the narrator of those tapes, who was a master of 500 voices (like Jim Dale of Harry Potter CD fame.) We laughed all the way there and all the way home and while on our vacation, touring Injun Joe's cave was particularly exciting because we had just heard the tale. One summer we listened to lesser known kids' books as we ran errands around town and polished off several books that way. Even Taylor, who was less inclined to read novels, enjoyed hearing those, which I selected to match his interests.

Dumbfounded

What do you do when your kid's smarter than you are? I guess life goes on - I'm still the mom, right? What I say goes and all of that...but it is a little unnerving.

My sophomore son just took the ACT for his first time and scored much higher than I even dreamed of scoring, eclipsing his father and me by several points, and his older brother, the valedictorian, by one point. To celebrate he sat down at the piano to play "Defying Gravity" (I can't play a note) then went outside in the heat of the day to mow the front lawn. What a good kid!

And I am left contemplating my next move. How do I channel him? Do I lead or follow? He's still a 16-year-old kid with all of the usual immaturities and not much actual life experience, but he's smart, really smart, and in ways that I am not. That's the unsettling part.

When I was pregnant with Tom, I saw a nurse midwife who recommended that I eat a lot of red meat in the 4th through 6ths months of my pregnancy for brain development. At the time I thought it sounded a little far fetched, but on the slim chance that she knew what she was talking about, I did eat a lot of red meat - is that how this happened? He's had several excellent teachers - should I hold them responsible? I'm not complaining - just (literally) dumbfounded.

Several years ago, miffed by how rarely I was given an opportunity to punish my children, I coined a new word: spankable, which functions as both a noun and an adjective. Whenever one of my children comes up with a brilliant idea, making me feel inferior in any way, I declare their idea to be 'spankable' and start chasing them until I have them in a bear hug. (This first happened when Abby, then three years old, corrected my assembly of her Fischer Price kitchen. She couldn't read yet, but she could tell by the schematic that I was putting it together incorrectly.) As they get older, they come up with 'spankable' ideas more and more frequently. I am regularly amazed by their original thinking. 'How did you come up with that?' I thought I was the one with all the answers.

I probably should have known that my children would surpass me - that's what everyone should reasonably expect. It just never occurred to me before.

Back from Girls' Camp

I am back from girls' camp and will write more ('blog') later.

Thank You, Charles Schulz!

I grew up with these guys - they're as real to me as neighbors and classmates from that time in my life. It's impossible to believe that they do not really exist, so it's time to show some posthumous gratitude to Charles Schulz for his humor and humanity.