Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "attachment-parenting"
Process & Result
Dear blog,
One day this past winter, or maybe it was early spring, I was at the playground with LittleK and everything was wet because it had been raining. There was only one other mother and tot there. I thought maybe we would chat and alleviate the boredom of the rainy-day playground with not-yet-two-year-olds, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to her and I guess she couldn’t think of anything to say to me either, because we just smiled and didn’t say anything. Then, as she was leaving, she thought of something to say to me. I was helping K climb a ladder and she said: “He’s never going to learn how to do things himself if you help him all the time.”
I sort of wanted to say, well it’s so wet and his boots are too big and he isn’t a very good climber and I am an anxious person and he is more precious to me than my own life and even though I know I can’t and shouldn’t, I want to protect him from every bump and tumble, I can’t help worrying about chipped teeth and bloody chins, but instead I just said, “yes he will,” and of course, a few months later, he climbs the ladder perfectly well on his own.
It bothered me, though. As we splashed our way home through puddles, I was thinking about how before I had kids I had no clue there existed this massive industry peddling various True Paths of Parenting, but once you have kids, it is almost impossible to be unaware of it: attachment parenting and free-range parenting and, god, French parenting, the judgment heaped on “helicopter” parents and Tiger Moms, all of that. The idea behind it all seems to be that if you Do Everything Right you can produce a child (and eventually an adult) who is secure and intelligent and independent and “successful,” whatever that might mean to you. They will not be daunted by the slippery ladders of life if they have been confidently climbing them all along. Or something.
I am as susceptible as anyone to that needling anxiety that I am somehow Doing It All Wrong. With Kid #1, I read a bunch of books, hoping they would tell me how to be a good parent. With Kid #2, as generally happens, I felt much more relaxed. After all, I only had to look at Kid #1 to see that while I may indeed be Doing It All Wrong, he was doing just fine in spite of me.
***
This may not seem related, but it is, so bear with me (if you feel like bearing with me, that is – you could also stop reading this and go do something else, obviously, it’s not like I’m going to know about it): I’m writing a novel. This will be the sixth novel I’ve written. Two of them were terrible – one a jumbled first attempt at a novel, and the other written in a sleep-deprived haze as if I was desperately trying to type my way back towards being a person who could function and write stories. Three others make up The Last Days of Tian Di series. Shade and Sorceress was published by Coteau Books last fall and its sequel, The Unmaking, will be out in September. Approving the final galleys of Shade and Sorceress was the first time I ever had to say of a book I’d written: OK, this is finished. It was terrifying, but thrilling too, to see it finally in book form, with its lovely cover and my name there on the front, knowing I couldn’t change it anymore, that it was really, truly done and I had now put it out into the world, beyond the reach of my edit-itchy fingers. It was my first taste of completion.
Now I am Almost Done something new. Or maybe not, but I think that I am. The first draft came out in a giddy six-week burst of excitement, and it has been through several revisions since. I’ve never found the process (and the revision process in particular) so deeply satisfying before. I’ve never been so sure that I know what I am doing. I find myself enjoying the mechanics of it so much, mapping out the plot in tiny detail and rearranging, cutting, adding, making character background notes for myself, pages of elaborate world-building, all of it. It’s the giddy, joyful feeling of getting better at something you love to do, and now as I get closer to done, I am really proud of it. While I might at times bemoan my limitations, I have a confidence as a writer that I don’t have, could never have, as a parent. I enjoy and I think I am good at the process, the notes and ideas, the outlining, the drafting, the rewriting and revising. I work at it because I love it and if you work at one thing long enough then there is a result: a book!
***
So anyway, maybe LittleK would have learned to climb a ladder sooner if I hadn’t helped him. And I guess this mom at the park who was so disturbed by my helping my kid up a wet ladder that she simply HAD to say something to me about it was trying to make a larger point about children becoming more independent and resourceful people in general if left to do little things like climb ladders by themselves. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t but really, I cannot tell you how little I care. Of course I want my kids to be happy and healthy and kind, now and in the future. There is a kind of startled satisfaction and delight in seeing them sit at the table and eat with forks, and there was much celebration when K was potty-trained and we were Done With Diapers Forevah, there are a million ways in which we watch them grow and learn and change and feel like we had something to do with it and so yay us, but I intensely dislike the idea that childhood is a process and adulthood is the result. It belittles childhood, as if who they are now is secondary to who they might become, and besides, I think it’s a huge waste of energy, trying to carefully mold your child.
I don’t control the narrative here. I can’t go back and revise all my mistakes and while sometimes I wish I could, mostly that’s fine. I am not working towards an ending, laying plot points to carry the story where I want it to go. It goes so fast, this whirlwind of days and nights, the bandaids on knees and the midnight washing of pukey sheets and the crab that startled us jumping out of the oyster shell on the beach and that glorious run down the long grassy hill and I almost had a heart attack this morning when he chased his ball towards the road and now look, just look at them with their heads together over the book, so intent, such a pair, I can’t believe how long their legs are now, or their toenails either, yeesh, I need to find the nail clippers. I’m not really in control of the way it turns out. I may have given birth to them but now they are in the world I am not the author of any of this, I’m just on hand to make sure they eat some vegetables and don’t fall off the playground equipment. We are just trying to have a good time and be kind to each other. It’s busy and messy and frustrating and fun and there is very little time to look back or look forward.
What I mean to say is that I am not at all concerned about how my helping K up a wet ladder may or may not affect some older, future, unimaginable K. They are who they are now and, perhaps unluckily for all of us, I am who I am too, but we love each other beyond measure. I have faith that they will grow up to be kind people, if That Guy and I can manage to be kind to them and to each other. Beyond that, I don’t even know how to think about the future, who they might be, what our lives will look like.
So. JUST in case you are thinking, holy batcow lady, what are you trying to say, this is what I am trying to say: when you are writing a book, there is this process that is partly an end in itself but not really, because the point, the REAL point, is the result: a book. You work on it until it’s done, until it is the book you wanted to write. But when you are taking care of a child, that’s not the way it is at all. It’s all process and then we die. There is no finished product. There is no completion. We are always being and becoming and there is so much beyond our control, so much we are always getting wrong, that sweating the small stuff just means sweating a lot. My conclusion: children are not books and vice versa. You’re welcome.
Yours, always-ready-with-a-radical-philosophy,
Catherine
One day this past winter, or maybe it was early spring, I was at the playground with LittleK and everything was wet because it had been raining. There was only one other mother and tot there. I thought maybe we would chat and alleviate the boredom of the rainy-day playground with not-yet-two-year-olds, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to her and I guess she couldn’t think of anything to say to me either, because we just smiled and didn’t say anything. Then, as she was leaving, she thought of something to say to me. I was helping K climb a ladder and she said: “He’s never going to learn how to do things himself if you help him all the time.”
I sort of wanted to say, well it’s so wet and his boots are too big and he isn’t a very good climber and I am an anxious person and he is more precious to me than my own life and even though I know I can’t and shouldn’t, I want to protect him from every bump and tumble, I can’t help worrying about chipped teeth and bloody chins, but instead I just said, “yes he will,” and of course, a few months later, he climbs the ladder perfectly well on his own.
It bothered me, though. As we splashed our way home through puddles, I was thinking about how before I had kids I had no clue there existed this massive industry peddling various True Paths of Parenting, but once you have kids, it is almost impossible to be unaware of it: attachment parenting and free-range parenting and, god, French parenting, the judgment heaped on “helicopter” parents and Tiger Moms, all of that. The idea behind it all seems to be that if you Do Everything Right you can produce a child (and eventually an adult) who is secure and intelligent and independent and “successful,” whatever that might mean to you. They will not be daunted by the slippery ladders of life if they have been confidently climbing them all along. Or something.
I am as susceptible as anyone to that needling anxiety that I am somehow Doing It All Wrong. With Kid #1, I read a bunch of books, hoping they would tell me how to be a good parent. With Kid #2, as generally happens, I felt much more relaxed. After all, I only had to look at Kid #1 to see that while I may indeed be Doing It All Wrong, he was doing just fine in spite of me.
***
This may not seem related, but it is, so bear with me (if you feel like bearing with me, that is – you could also stop reading this and go do something else, obviously, it’s not like I’m going to know about it): I’m writing a novel. This will be the sixth novel I’ve written. Two of them were terrible – one a jumbled first attempt at a novel, and the other written in a sleep-deprived haze as if I was desperately trying to type my way back towards being a person who could function and write stories. Three others make up The Last Days of Tian Di series. Shade and Sorceress was published by Coteau Books last fall and its sequel, The Unmaking, will be out in September. Approving the final galleys of Shade and Sorceress was the first time I ever had to say of a book I’d written: OK, this is finished. It was terrifying, but thrilling too, to see it finally in book form, with its lovely cover and my name there on the front, knowing I couldn’t change it anymore, that it was really, truly done and I had now put it out into the world, beyond the reach of my edit-itchy fingers. It was my first taste of completion.
Now I am Almost Done something new. Or maybe not, but I think that I am. The first draft came out in a giddy six-week burst of excitement, and it has been through several revisions since. I’ve never found the process (and the revision process in particular) so deeply satisfying before. I’ve never been so sure that I know what I am doing. I find myself enjoying the mechanics of it so much, mapping out the plot in tiny detail and rearranging, cutting, adding, making character background notes for myself, pages of elaborate world-building, all of it. It’s the giddy, joyful feeling of getting better at something you love to do, and now as I get closer to done, I am really proud of it. While I might at times bemoan my limitations, I have a confidence as a writer that I don’t have, could never have, as a parent. I enjoy and I think I am good at the process, the notes and ideas, the outlining, the drafting, the rewriting and revising. I work at it because I love it and if you work at one thing long enough then there is a result: a book!
***
So anyway, maybe LittleK would have learned to climb a ladder sooner if I hadn’t helped him. And I guess this mom at the park who was so disturbed by my helping my kid up a wet ladder that she simply HAD to say something to me about it was trying to make a larger point about children becoming more independent and resourceful people in general if left to do little things like climb ladders by themselves. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t but really, I cannot tell you how little I care. Of course I want my kids to be happy and healthy and kind, now and in the future. There is a kind of startled satisfaction and delight in seeing them sit at the table and eat with forks, and there was much celebration when K was potty-trained and we were Done With Diapers Forevah, there are a million ways in which we watch them grow and learn and change and feel like we had something to do with it and so yay us, but I intensely dislike the idea that childhood is a process and adulthood is the result. It belittles childhood, as if who they are now is secondary to who they might become, and besides, I think it’s a huge waste of energy, trying to carefully mold your child.
I don’t control the narrative here. I can’t go back and revise all my mistakes and while sometimes I wish I could, mostly that’s fine. I am not working towards an ending, laying plot points to carry the story where I want it to go. It goes so fast, this whirlwind of days and nights, the bandaids on knees and the midnight washing of pukey sheets and the crab that startled us jumping out of the oyster shell on the beach and that glorious run down the long grassy hill and I almost had a heart attack this morning when he chased his ball towards the road and now look, just look at them with their heads together over the book, so intent, such a pair, I can’t believe how long their legs are now, or their toenails either, yeesh, I need to find the nail clippers. I’m not really in control of the way it turns out. I may have given birth to them but now they are in the world I am not the author of any of this, I’m just on hand to make sure they eat some vegetables and don’t fall off the playground equipment. We are just trying to have a good time and be kind to each other. It’s busy and messy and frustrating and fun and there is very little time to look back or look forward.
What I mean to say is that I am not at all concerned about how my helping K up a wet ladder may or may not affect some older, future, unimaginable K. They are who they are now and, perhaps unluckily for all of us, I am who I am too, but we love each other beyond measure. I have faith that they will grow up to be kind people, if That Guy and I can manage to be kind to them and to each other. Beyond that, I don’t even know how to think about the future, who they might be, what our lives will look like.
So. JUST in case you are thinking, holy batcow lady, what are you trying to say, this is what I am trying to say: when you are writing a book, there is this process that is partly an end in itself but not really, because the point, the REAL point, is the result: a book. You work on it until it’s done, until it is the book you wanted to write. But when you are taking care of a child, that’s not the way it is at all. It’s all process and then we die. There is no finished product. There is no completion. We are always being and becoming and there is so much beyond our control, so much we are always getting wrong, that sweating the small stuff just means sweating a lot. My conclusion: children are not books and vice versa. You’re welcome.
Yours, always-ready-with-a-radical-philosophy,
Catherine
