On October 2nd I completed my 20th year of being a mother.
Cumulatively I have mothered 61 years of my children's lives. (I have 5 kids ranging from 6 to 20).
When I started this gig I did EVERYTHING I could to protect, shelter, hide, and buffer the realities of this world from my precious infants. I didn't allow television for a long time. Video games and electronics were taboo. I had my kids transferred into the 'better' school within the best school district where the crowd was more affluent & the test scores noticeably higher. We moved to a street where the people all looked like us, and the homes all looked like each other, and despite the crime rate being non-existent - we still watched the kids like hawks when they played in the locked & fenced in back yard. We picked a church that gave us guidelines and checklists for how to live, so that we could feel good about our goodness, and also allowed us to give back to OUR community ... so we could feel like we had done a noble act of service by raking the leaves from the front yards of neighbors homes, you know, so they would look pretty. We chose to spend our time around people who made us feel good about our progress in life, our decisions, our desires, our 'giving', our material items (we were growing a family - so new and bigger was always a must), our upgraded counter tops, our decks for entertaining, our investments so as to save properly for the children's college years, and any number of things we HAD to have for the children's safety and well being.
Cumulatively I have mothered 61 years of my children's lives. (I have 5 kids ranging from 6 to 20).
When I started this gig I did EVERYTHING I could to protect, shelter, hide, and buffer the realities of this world from my precious infants. I didn't allow television for a long time. Video games and electronics were taboo. I had my kids transferred into the 'better' school within the best school district where the crowd was more affluent & the test scores noticeably higher. We moved to a street where the people all looked like us, and the homes all looked like each other, and despite the crime rate being non-existent - we still watched the kids like hawks when they played in the locked & fenced in back yard. We picked a church that gave us guidelines and checklists for how to live, so that we could feel good about our goodness, and also allowed us to give back to OUR community ... so we could feel like we had done a noble act of service by raking the leaves from the front yards of neighbors homes, you know, so they would look pretty. We chose to spend our time around people who made us feel good about our progress in life, our decisions, our desires, our 'giving', our material items (we were growing a family - so new and bigger was always a must), our upgraded counter tops, our decks for entertaining, our investments so as to save properly for the children's college years, and any number of things we HAD to have for the children's safety and well being.
I read parenting books, I became politically knowledgeable & well versed in the Bible ... and I was sure to pontificate ALL of my beliefs & opinions so as to get warm and fuzzy acknowledgements from all of the clones in my life. I had no reason not to believe I was an exceptional parent ... and my children were only toddlers - I must be waaaaayyyyy ahead of the game - or so I thought.
I bought into the glass box.
I bought into the idea I could make my children do and be whatever I wanted them to be.
I bought into the glass box.
I bought into the idea I could make my children do and be whatever I wanted them to be.
With time, came the realization that all of my sheltering wasn't going to prepare my children for the realities of life ... and if I was to keep up my attempts to control their environment with only admission granted to the 'perfect' things -- my world was only going to get SMALLER, not better - and far harder to regulate. I realized that sheltering my children was more about my own discomfort, my own insecurities & my own prejudices than it was about really preparing my child for life outside of my grip. I didn't want to explain why the man on the corner was begging for money & stumbling (they may want me to help him - oh, but he'd just buy alcohol, right!?) , I didn't want to explain what gay was (they may want to be gay ... right!?) or why the kid at school had to sleep at Grandma's house on weekends so his Mom could 'work'. I couldn't bear the thought of the fear they may feel from knowing kidnapping existed or marriages could break apart or drug addicts were real, or that people could have babies when they weren't married, or even living together, that there were drunks or child molesters or criminals. I didn't want to accept that people who made bad choices were anything more than lazy or crazy, or lacking God or just plain evil.
So I figured I could just keep them from such things and they wouldn't have to know. I'd just box us in to suburbia, I'd choose their friends, I'd limit their access to the world - no TV, no Internet, no Cell phones ... I'd keep them in only the safest parts of town - so assisting the homeless or anything else was just simply too dangerous. We would have family game nights for entertainment ... we'd become well versed in the Bible and would watch documentaries for fun. I would never leave them in a car while I ran into a gas station, I'd not let them ride their bikes out of my sight, or let them run into the store to get an item. I would shield and protect them from EVERYTHING, no broken families in our circle, no gay families, no cultural differences to explain or be tolerant of. I was going to create the Truman Show ... I was going to do this SO right.
So I figured I could just keep them from such things and they wouldn't have to know. I'd just box us in to suburbia, I'd choose their friends, I'd limit their access to the world - no TV, no Internet, no Cell phones ... I'd keep them in only the safest parts of town - so assisting the homeless or anything else was just simply too dangerous. We would have family game nights for entertainment ... we'd become well versed in the Bible and would watch documentaries for fun. I would never leave them in a car while I ran into a gas station, I'd not let them ride their bikes out of my sight, or let them run into the store to get an item. I would shield and protect them from EVERYTHING, no broken families in our circle, no gay families, no cultural differences to explain or be tolerant of. I was going to create the Truman Show ... I was going to do this SO right.
I was wrong.
For so long I was wrong.
I created an environment that took hours of overtime & mounds of anxiety pills to make pretty.
I created an environment where I did so much to keep things perfect ... that I was almost always worn out.
I created an environment that was rigid and judgmental and intolerable and inflexible ...
I created an environment where I did so much to keep things perfect ... that I was almost always worn out.
I created an environment that was rigid and judgmental and intolerable and inflexible ...
I have learned over the past twenty years that:
If I protect them FROM it ... I don't prepare them FOR it.
... and in my state of protection, I planted seeds of fear, so that when they were eventually confronted with it (and they ALWAYS are) they were unprepared for how to deal with it.
When something scares us we either run from it, or we beat the hell out of it ... either way, we aren't loving it, and it's by loving it that you can disarm it.
I decided to let them SEE & EXPERIENCE the reality of life - and show them how to love it, how to deal with it, how to trust their gut & how to be independent ...
There isn't a lot these days that my kids can't deal with - especially collectively ...
I was humbled and exhausted from trying to keep our masks on all the time & to keep everything perfect ...
At my house now, we do REAL. We do hard work. We do gratefulness. We do empathy. We do mistakes. We do do-overs. We don't judge. We look into the eyes of the man who lost his leg & ask why - we don't pretend it away. We get to the core of other's wounds. We love on the hurting. We do difficult discussions ... and we acknowledge we don't have all the answers. Sometimes we just have to let go of our 'pretty' & love what may be ugly. Ugly is where the lessons are, where the strength is conceived and where the warriors are made.
I don't believe this world was built for the weak ... but the weak sure like to build their worlds huh?
Get out of your comfort zone ...
Show your children the world.
A prepared child is a powerful leader in the making ...
A child hidden from it - tends to build only an empire of walls later in life.
... and you wonder why they never call.
Love you,
Alli
I decided to let them SEE & EXPERIENCE the reality of life - and show them how to love it, how to deal with it, how to trust their gut & how to be independent ...
There isn't a lot these days that my kids can't deal with - especially collectively ...
I was humbled and exhausted from trying to keep our masks on all the time & to keep everything perfect ...
At my house now, we do REAL. We do hard work. We do gratefulness. We do empathy. We do mistakes. We do do-overs. We don't judge. We look into the eyes of the man who lost his leg & ask why - we don't pretend it away. We get to the core of other's wounds. We love on the hurting. We do difficult discussions ... and we acknowledge we don't have all the answers. Sometimes we just have to let go of our 'pretty' & love what may be ugly. Ugly is where the lessons are, where the strength is conceived and where the warriors are made.
I don't believe this world was built for the weak ... but the weak sure like to build their worlds huh?
Get out of your comfort zone ...
Show your children the world.
A prepared child is a powerful leader in the making ...
A child hidden from it - tends to build only an empire of walls later in life.
... and you wonder why they never call.
Love you,
Alli
This is my FAVORITE one by far. Exquisitely written, provocative and unyielding.
ReplyDeleteOMG, this is my story. I did the same thing and when my oldest graduated from high school and was turned loose into the world, he was completely unprepared and had no street smarts. Luckily, that was an eye opener so I could prepare my other kids about the REAL world.
ReplyDelete