Parenting Principle: Only Make Limits They Show You They Need

The picture is Livy, clearly regulating her own clothing choices! :)

I want to start with a non-parenting example of this that I think Objectivists will relate to. Should we make laws ahead of time to prohibit a factory from polluting? No. The proper role of government isn't to think of all the ways people could do something wrong and make them all illegal. The government's role is to stop people from violating others' rights. So, we wait until there has been some actual violation, like contamination of the water supply (proved harmful by science in a court), and then the government makes the polluter stop.

Rules made ahead of time almost always infringe on someone's rights because they don't take circumstances and context into account. In the above example, there might be factories dumping something harmless into the water and a general law against pollution might infringe on their right to do this. Rules imposed before any wrongdoing are edicts, rather than responses to a violation. They also usually fail to prevent wrongdoing because people can get into trouble in a million ways no one has thought up. The government example is not perfectly lined up with parenting, but I think it illustrates the idea of responding to negative behavior rather than trying to legislate it away.

In the realm of parenting, I have seen many people who come up with a rule ahead of time. They decide that a child may only watch 1 hour of TV a day, that children must eat two bites of broccoli before they can have a cookie, that there will be no food in the living room, and that bedtime will be at 7:30. All of these rules address behavior that could be a problem for a child - too much TV watching, eating all sweets and no healthier options, spilling food on furniture or leaving it to attract bugs, or staying up so late that it is hard to get up for school the next morning. But all these problems may or may not happen. Why not address them when they occur? A few things to consider:

1. Addressing problems as they occur allows the most freedom. In the case of TV, if the child is able to watch TV in healthy amounts without your help, by not stepping in ahead of time you have not restricted the child unnecessarily. You have given the child a chance to succeed on his own.

2. Addressing problems as they occur allows the child to experience problem solving rather than obedience. If the child watches TV in amounts that are unhealthy and starts to show some negative symptoms, the parent and child have the opportunity to figure out a solution together. Parent and child can talk about why the child is watching so much, try to meet whatever need the child has in a healthier way, and discuss how TV can be harmful. The lesson of why it is bad to watch too much TV can be learned in a much more grounded way when the child experienced the negatives first. (Of course, a child cannot be allowed to experience all negative consequences. Experiencing a car hitting you is too hard a lesson to learn not to run into the street.)

3. Addressing problems as they occur makes reality the rule giver and not the parent. A child who has had a chance to try to self-regulate his TV watching and failed will be less likely to rebel against a limit. "When you watch TV all day without going outside to play, you are cranky and hard to be around. Too much sitting and too much staring at the TV isn't good for your body and your brain. You have showed me that you need help turning it off. Let figure out a plan for watching TV and doing other things" is easier to hear than "Two hours of TV a day." In the first option, the child and the parent are on the same team. A problem has occurred, and they will figure out how to solve it together. The edict ("Too much sitting and too much staring at the TV isn't good for your body and your brain.") has been imposed by reality. The parent is a guide to help you figure out how to live with reality's rules. The second, even when the reasons are explained to a child, is an edict imposed by the parents before the child has a chance to interact with reality.

4. Addressing problems as they occur shows the child that you trust their ability to handle their lives. (The catch: you actually have to trust their ability to handle their lives.) They will make mistakes, no doubt, and you will be there to help them figure out the mistake and what to do next time. But if you make rules before any mistakes have been made, it shows the child that you think they will make all those mistakes. I think this can cause a child to doubt their own efficacy. By allowing children to try things, you are telling them that they are capable human beings.

So, the principle I use is to allow kids to be in control of their own behavior (unless the consequences of failure are too dire) and to help them understand reality and how to behave in it when they fail. Livy has surprised me with her efficacy many times (from handling pitchers and knives to self-regulating TV, food, and sleep), and I am so glad that I have given her the chance to succeed without me.

My Livy Vision

My dear friend RationalJenn and I were talking today about what we envision our kids being when they are grown. I thought it might be interesting for you guys to know the things I am aiming for in my parenting. Here's what I would like Livy to be at, say, age 21:

I want her to be aware of what she likes to do and what she is good at doing, and I want her to have the skills it takes to begin her career. I want her to have the social skills necessary to maintain good romantic relationships and friendships. I also want her to be able to deal with bosses, coworkers, and random people in the world. I want her to be virtuous (honest, integrated, rational, independent, productive, just, and prideful) because I want her to be able to be happy. I want her to have a good understanding of herself (her personality, strengths, weaknesses, etc) and be working to make herself the best person she can be. I want her to be physically healthy and know how to maintain her health with good nutrition and exercise and sleep. I want her to be able to set goals and work to achieve them. I want her to have a layman's understanding of Objectivism and use it to guide her life.

Here are the things I don't care a lick if she does (I'm not opposed to them, just don't think they are for everyone, and she'll have to decide for herself):

I don't care if she goes to college, gets an apprenticeship, starts a business of her own, or travels the world for a while before settling down. I don't care if she's gay or straight or bi or an introvert with a tight knit group or an extrovert with a huge group, I just want her to be able to have healthy, satisfying relationships with those she chooses to be with. I don't care what her particular optional values are. She doesn't have to be a reader or a liberally educated person or like science. She doesn't have to like my music; she can like thrash metal is she wants to.

I guess this is one more post that should be labeled "minding my own business parenting." What things Livy chooses to pursue are not my business; I will be delighted if she is happy and rational.

Observations about Gymnastics

I quit my gymnastics job to be home with Livy this summer, and it was incredibly hard for me to leave. I'm sure every competent person feels that their workplace cannot get along without them when they leave (no matter how well they usually do get along), but I felt it doubly because I am taking the only bit of outside perspective away with me. I did not do gymnastics as a child, and I think that has given me some advantages, as well as the obvious disadvantages. I do not immediately think of the way I was taught a skill; I have an easier time breaking out of the traditions and finding new and better ways to teach. I am not attached to the reputation of our gym in the same way; as long as the girls are learning and having a good time, I am not too concerned whether people think the gym has gone down since the good old days. The best advantage for me, though, is that I came into gymnastics with the attitudes about sports that I picked up from basketball, softball, and martial arts. They are much healthier attitudes.

Here's the way other sports work: There are several different levels. There are kids who play just recreationally. There are kids who compete on school teams or private teams who work a bit harder. There are people who are going to do this professionally, or at least at the Olympics. Not in gymnastics. The attitude is that if you are not going to work really hard and strive to be the best, there is no point in even competing. The competition can't be just for fun. There are recreational gymnasts, and there are competitive gymnasts who are super good. There is no room for people in between. There are teams of mediocre gymnasts, of course, but then people say, "Why even compete?" It's ridiculous.

Then there is the body image problem. In order to be really good at gymnastics in the modern world, you have to be a man, or at least you have to starve yourself completely until you don't get your period and your ribs stick out. Most kids at the level I teach do not do this. But the coaches once did, cause they were good back in the glory days. There is an unspoken (usually) criticism in the gym of hips and breasts and any amount of fat. When the rumor gets around that someone is throwing up in the bathroom after lunch every day, I am the one of the few who thinks that is horrific and scary and a sign that the child needs help. It's not that the other coaches don't care; they just see that kind of thing as normal. Talk about being too fat is bantered around by the girls all the time. It kills me to hear a 12 year old with amazing muscles and lines say that she is just so fat, and she is never going to have another cookie. Of course, she does have another cookie sometime- the child is 12 - and then she hates herself for it. Perhaps this body crisis is happening in adolescent girls everywhere, but I think sports should make girls feel better about their bodies, not worse. In soccer, you have to be really fat before it harms your athletic performance and before it shows in your uniform, and even then, I don't think it would be said behind your back (by some of your coaches) that you are too fat for soccer. But in gymnastics, even the normal body changes of puberty ruin your performance, not to mention if you gain some fat, and if you gain any weight, start to grow mosquito bites for breasts or get a waist, everyone knows. Leotards display every tiny imperfection and sign of impeding adulthood.

I would like for there to be team gymnastics for girls in the middle, the ones who are talented, but not extremely. I would like them to compete and enjoy the thrill of a meet, just like girls in other sports do. I would like to take girls who can do the skills, but who are too old, too fat, too dainty looking, too flighty, too immature, just like every other sport does. I was able to bring a little bit of this philosophy into my workplace. I was the advocate for the teenager who wanted to start competing at a fairly low level (Why not? Does it matter if she goes much farther?). I was the one who insists that the girls are lovely and perfect when they complain about how fat and yucky they are. I am the one who thinks it is my fault when a child can't get a skill, not hers; I just need to find a different way to teach it. I hope I had a good effect on our gym because of my outsider's perspective on the sport, and I will miss trying to inject what I consider sanity into a sport that sometimes lacks it.

Religious Epistemology

I've been thinking about the remnants of religion ever since I ended up talking with some secular humanists last Friday night. They were complete skeptics, and according to them, humans can never be certain about anything. These people believe in gravity, in evolution, in God's non-existence, yet they cannot say for certain. I've been pondering why they have this attitude ever since, and here's what I've got.

These humanists have gotten rid of God, but they are still left with altruism, a religious morality. I've decided their epistemology is also a leftover. Skepticism is basically the desire for knowledge to exist without context. They want to know something without sensing it and without forming any concepts about it. These folks will only admit they know something if they know it in the way God knows stuff, by no means at all. They have a religious epistemology, without the religion. Weird.

This Year's Decoration

Every year my family goes to Egger Cemetery on the first Saturday in May and decorates our graves. We put flowers on our family graves, walk the cemetery, point out the place where Molly Halbert went fox hunting with Papaw and where the old homeplace was, have lunch at our same Mennonite bakery, and generally have a good time. I thought I'd write up how it went this year, which is the same as every year.

We leave Meridian mid-morning and set out for Columbus up Highway 45. This is the highway I drove up when I first left home for school, and we drive it every year to decoration. We stop in Brooksville, at the Mennonite bakery, eat taco pie, and argue over the check. Then we drive into Columbus. We go first to Friendship Cemetery and leave a live chrysanthemum on Alva's grave. Alva was my grandmother's sister; her husband buried her away from the rest of us. It is strange that she lies alone in an unfamiliar cemetery. We argue on the way to her grave about which turn to make; does she lie on Maple Dr. or Crepe Myrtle Dr.? We never get it right. It has only been two weeks, and I can't remember right now which one it is.

After decorating Alva's grave, we drive through the bad part of Columbus. The houses are all shiny new. There was a tornado and some federal disaster relief, so lots of people have new and tidy houses instead of the shacks that were here before. We notice the roses. They are called "Seven Sisters" because there are seven little flowers clustered together to make each bloom. They are always in full bloom the first weekend in May, and we always say,"That's why decoration is this weekend. They could use the roses that grow in everyone's yard to decorate. That was before florist shops." Decoration has a script, and we follow it like a liturgy. The words themselves are traditions passed down from our dead. I heard the words as a child, learned the legends of my people as children always have, through hearing them repeated. Livy hears them now.

We drive from Columbus to Caledonia, where Mimi (my grandmother) was born. As we drive through the town, she points out every location of note, following the script: Mullins Well where Uncle Charlie killed himself, the church where the minister ran off with a lady from the choir, the field where Wiley Henderson died working and got dragged home by the mule, the road to our oil well (the proceeds of which total about $100 a year, divided among 5 children), and the sign pointing the way to Flint Hill, where Papaw went to singing school.

Our cemetery is outside Caledonia on Wolfe Rd. We pause as we pass through the gate; Mimi points out her daddy's name, Clarence Smith, written right on the gatepost. He gave half the land; an Egger gave the rest. She tells us that he was a supervisor in Caledonia. The house where she was born used to sit on the top of a hill separated from the cemetery by a stand of trees. I can vaguely remember what they old homeplace looked like, but now it has been torn down. There is a new red brick house there now, and horses graze without leads on the unfenced yard.

We drive into the cemetery and get down to business. There are artificial flowers to be put on all the main graves: Mimi's parents (the Smiths), my dad, Aunt Lovie and Uncle Harvey and their infant twins, Papaw, and Ray (Mimi and Papaw's 4th child). These are all right next to the little chapel, except for my dad, and so they have to look just right. There will be a service on Sunday, and people will see them and think of us and say, "My, those look just lovely. Those Freemans always do a good job." My dad is buried in a newer section of the cemetery. We decorate him next. He is near Aunt Willie Lou and the Hendersons, so we visit them while we are over that way.

The next part is my favorite. We walk out into the oldest part of the cemetery. Usually my mom and I go without Mimi because she has seen 48 people she hasn't seen since last year and is deep in conversation. Mama and I start with the Freemans, Papaw's people. We decorate his daddy and his granddaddy and his great-granddaddy and all the wives and mothers and infant children. All these Freemans get artificial flowers on long stems stuck into the ground next to their tombstones. We always stop at James Freeman's grave, under the cedar tree, and count up all the greats. He is my three greats grandfather and Livy's four greats. He came home from the Civil War in a wagon. We stop to look at Margaret Idella, who my mother is named for. Her grave got run over by an old lady who accidentally put her car in reverse, and so her stone is very new and an easy way to find our row. We remember to count up the babies that died from yellow fever, one after the other, and we always say how glad we are to have modern medicine. Then we go visit Aunt Molly and Uncle Jim, who lived with Mimi's family when she was a child. Mimi thought Aunt Molly was mean as a snake when she was little, but now she imagines what it must have been like for a childless aunt to live in the middle of that hullabaloo and she is more understanding.

The last grave is the only one we decorate who isn't a relative. We start from James Freeman and walk 27 paces diagonal toward the far corner. A tiny grave lies there, worn down to almost nothing and practically unreadable. We always trace the letters with our fingers since they are hard to see: Goudelock. This is the Goudelock (pronounced Gadlock) baby. We tell the story again, of course. There was a minister at the little Caledonia Methodist Church who had a tiny baby that died while they were here. Methodist ministers have to move on, and the mother couldn't stand to leave the baby without anybody to see to the grave, so Julius Freeman, Papaw's daddy, promised to always decorate the grave. And still, we always decorate the baby, just like it was our own people, and we think of the minister's wife. It gives me chills now, writing this, when I think of my mother and I honoring a promise made by my great-grandfather. The decorating of this grave, more than any other we do, makes me feel continuity as if it were a concrete thing.

All this time, Livy has been running wild through the graves, like I did as a child, getting muddy and stepping in fire ant hills. We have done the work of decoration (the digging and the cleaning), and we have done the remembering and the repeating. We are tired, and Mississippi is hot in May. We clean our hands, pack up the trash to take home, and drive back into the present.

A Composition Entitled: What I Did This Summer

A list of things I have done so far this summer as a lady of leisure:

taken a bath with Livy
translated a French poem
had lunch with a very cool friend whom I do not see often enough to suit me
watched Season 1 and part of Season 2 of Buffy
watched Enchanted with Livy cuddled up with me in my bed
planted my summer veggies
listened to Ayn Rand's speech "Philosophy, Who needs it?" with a group of Objectivists
eaten Chinese food
finished Maisey Dobbs
applied for a neat-o new job for the fall

The Cicada and the Ant

I just translated my first French poem, "La cigale et la fourmi" by Fontaine. It was his version of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. What fun! It has been many years since I have been pouring over a text with a dictionary in hand, struggling through a foreign language. And French is totally new to me today. Tres cool.

You can hear a reading of the poem here.

Mustering Up the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot (and Should Not) Change

I've been thinking today about acceptance being a key aspect of good parenting. I think we all have a tendency to want our children to share our favorite personality traits with us, our like and dislikes, and our talents. It's natural; we want our children to be like us and to be people we have lots in common with. But I think we really must keep this desire in check. We do not get to create people in our own image. Instead, we have to nurture the people we get.

I am a reader, big time. I read all the time - trashy pulp novels, great classics, and everything in between. I find it incredibly hard to relax about Livy's lack of interest in books. She doesn't want to learn to read right now, and she isn't too interested in hearing me read books to her. She enjoys it sometimes, but not like I do. I have to remind myself often that Livy isn't me; she will be her own kind of person. There are good people, happy, rational people, who aren't readers the way that I am.

Another example is how she is a homebody. I love to go out places all the time. In my perfect world, I would only be home long enough to get the basic chores done, and then I would go out again. Livy, on the other hand, would rather stay home most of the day. She likes to play quietly in her room a lot, and that's okay. I have to remind myself that there are lots of happy, rational people who are introverts and enjoy their time at home very much.

I guess what I mean is this: Our children are not ours for molding. They come equipped with talents, likes, and dislikes, and it is not our business as parents to go changing those things. It is only our business to help them learn what they like and dislike and the skills to use THEIR talents to accomplish THEIR goals.