I believe sincerely in The Golden Rule - the idea that you should treat people the way that you want to be treated. I really do! It's so clear and common sense.
You know what the problem with it is? Other people do not want to be treated the way that I want to be treated.
For instance: a friend recently asked people who viewed her Facebook page to tell her about meaningful acts of service that they've received. Here's what I said: We were engaged for a year, which is ridiculous and stupid, and no one should ever do it. We also announced it immediately; also a mistake. We were being crushed under the weight of the (often loving, well intentioned) advice of our friends and family - "You MUST do this!" "You CAN'T do that!" "You WILL be getting those, WON'T you?" "You aren't going to wear THAT, are you?" We were told that I had to wear a loaner dress that I hated (I put my foot down and said NO), that we MUST get married in a church we'd never attended because their building was pretty and mine was plain, that a white dress would make my complexion look worse, that I shouldn't allow the brother in law with a catering business to do our food, that our color scheme was all wrong, and on and on and on. We seriously almost eloped.
My mom, knowing that I wanted nothing more than to make my own choices, said, "Just let me know what day to be there and what color to wear." It was the nicest thing anybody did for me all that year!!! Then, even though she can't stand crowds or entertaining, she let us get married in her back yard. She's the best.
I was really glad that my friend, and a couple of her family members, also my friends, "liked" the post. When I've told that story in the past, I haven't always gotten a positive response. I told one friend who was just aghast. "That's terrible! How could she do that to her own daughter?"
"No, no, it was fantastic! It was the best thing anyone did for me the whole year I was engaged!"
My friend was having none of it. "Well, it's nice that you've forgiven her, but she robbed you of all those mother/daughter moments you're supposed to have." I could not change her mind. She was convinced that it had been deeply painful, but that I was burying the hurt.
Had I wanted my mother to make endless shopping trips and compare colors and choose a menu, she would have done it. She did for my sister. But she wanted me to have what I wanted.
You know who I took shopping for my dress, the bridesmaid and flower girl dresses, the flowers? My husband. Do you know why? Because it was his wedding too, and because shopping with other people is deeply uncomfortable. I avoid it whenever I can. The last time I can remember shopping with a girlfriend (or sibling) was more than 25 years ago, when a buddy and I checked out the newest grocery store in town. She hated it, and I loved it.
My husband and I both saw the bridesmaid dresses at the same time. We were riding an escalator in a department store. I called his name to point them out at the exact moment he pointed and said, "Those are the ones!" We loved them. (We still do.)
Do you know what other people had to say about them? "Are you sure?" (We'd already bought 7 of them.) "Is the fabric appropriate for that time of year?" "Pink? Really?" "I'll bet the slender girls chose those, and the larger girls weren't too thrilled." "I had every attendant in a different color, so it would flatter their complexion.""So, you decided not to go with gowns?" "Did you ask the girls if they liked them before spending money on them?"
Even three decades later, it makes me want to scream. EVERY SINGLE WEDDING RELATED DECISION was accompanied by that kind of behavior. My mother came across as the island of sanity, in the midst of Meddlesome Mollies.
When my kids got married, I let them tell me what kind of involvement they wanted from me. I didn't shop for their dresses with them. I didn't "help" choose their color scheme, flowers, or theme. I let the one with strong opinions about clothes choose the dress that I wore. I got some say in buying food only because we were footing the food bill. I happen to think that's what a supportive parent does - lets the bride and groom call the shots. Carmen Miranda fruit hats? You bet. Barefoot? Absolutely - no shoe cost, no painful dress shoes.
I'm sure that somebody somewhere tells them how awful it was that I didn't give them "mother/daughter moments," and is amazed that they have forgiven me. I think that I did the right thing.
Lately, too, I've been thinking about this incident.
"On a message board for mothers, I recently read a very angry letter about a gift from a child's dad. Dad had been out of the picture for years and had recently resumed contact. Daughter was 5; he hadn't seen her since she was 2. For her birthday (or maybe it was Christmas), he bought her a sweater. Mom was outraged. "A SWEATER! Nothing for 3 years, then a sweater! I'm so angry I'm thinking of telling him he can't come over when he calls next!"
I'm aware that, since this involves custody issues and hard feelings, it's probably not about the actual sweater. It's probably about unpaid child support and court hearings. Still, the reaction seemed over the top.
I wrote back: "Men are notoriously bad at figuring out gift giving issues, especially when the gift is for a female." That "female" thing isn't exclusive, though. My father in law once gave his 15 year old son a Daniel Boone style fake coonskin cap. It would have been a great gift for a kid half that age. We have photos of my son delightedly wearing his through Frontierland at Disney World when he was 7. For a 15 year old, though, it was worse than no gift.
I offered my opinion that Sweater Dad was probably patting himself on the back. He was probably thinking, "It's practical, it's in her favorite color, she'll wear it every day." Unless told, I said, he would be unaware that anyone would look at that gift and think, "What is wrong with him?"
The mom who wrote the question didn't take issue with my answer, but others did. One woman wrote back that I (names are available on the site, and yes, she called me by name) was " a b***h." "Just because your husband is a loser doesn't mean that the rest of us have to put up with that s**t," she said.
Wow. I thought we were talking about a little girl's sweater." (More Misunderstandings)
Sometimes my kids baffle salespeople who are urging them to buy certain things for me - jewelry, makeup, candles, purses - when they say, "My mom's not into those." The thing is, they're right; but, that perplexes people.
A few years ago, my youngest daughter, who has a very minimal need for personal space, was told by a friend, "You're really in my space right now." Her immediate reaction? To say, "Oh, I'm sorry" - and wrap her arms around the friend, go cheek to cheek, and give them an extended hug.
"Honey! When someone says you're in their space, you don't fix that by getting closer!" She was totally baffled. Who doesn't want a hug?
Plenty of people, really, but that makes no sense to her.
I kind of chalked it up to age, and hoped she'd listen to me even if she didn't understand.
Then, recently, my husband and I were standing at a restaurant host/ess desk, waiting to be seated. We were the only ones there, yet my husband was literally right in my personal space. "You are so close you are literally touching me," I grumbled. (I have a need for a rather large amount of personal space.)
What did he do? "Oh, I'm sorry," wrapping his arms around me and kissing my cheek. I grumbled and squirmed. "Why are you so grumpy?" he wanted to know.
"Because I told you that you were too close, and you got closer!"
"I'm comforting my wife."
"It's not comforting if the reason she's stressed is that you're too close!"
This does not compute.
Everybody is comforted by different things. When there was a death in my friend's family, she did not understand her husband's reaction. "It's private, it's time to be with family, and he's phoning everyone that we know!" Yeah, I'm like her - in times of stress or grief, I need my universe to shrink. My husband needs to gather people around him; he'd be the one phoning everyone that he knows, their condolences buoying him. I might not want to speak to anybody, him included.
I once really, deeply offended my nephew's wife. She had a miscarriage; I've had more than one, and I remember what it felt like. I didn't want to talk to anyone, about anything. I barely spoke to my family, and that was it. I didn't want to leave the house, to have people tell me it'd be alright, and that they were thinking of me. It was too much to manage their feelings, on top of my own. So, I made my husband Gatekeeper, to turn people away until I could face the world, which was no more than a month. So, when our niece miscarried, I gave her space. "She does not need to have to deal with me," I thought.
When I phoned, after two weeks, she was livid. To her, my silence meant that I didn't care, that I hadn't thought of them at all, that their loss meant nothing. Horrified, I explained my thinking, and she forgave me, which was so sweet. Still, I feel the sting of having my good intentions hurt another person.
You hear talk about how hard "adulting" is. Forget "adulting" - I apparently have trouble "humaning."
Showing posts with label differences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label differences. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2018
Friday, October 24, 2014
Thank You For Your Support
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya
OK, part of it is the problem of the English language itself, with its ridiculous rules and exceptions to rules. I'll grant you that.
Still. Let's talk about support. The actual word - "support."
We so often use it to mean "agree with." People will insist that "the way to support" someone is to tell them that you think that they're correct, or that they should be doing whatever they're doing. They will tell you that to "support" your family or friends, you need, in essence, to say to them, "You are right. You are absolutely right."
It makes me crazy.
Most of the times that I felt most supported by my parents were the times when we disagreed.
Look on dictionary.com. They supply 19 definitions for "support," and not one contains the words "agree" or "agreement." Number 3, though, says, "to undergo or endure, especially with patience or submission; tolerate." My parents did a lot of that.
I've shared before the fact that I started attending a church at age seven. I went with the neighbors. My parents did not belong to any religion. Both of them, especially my dad, distrusted organized religions as a whole. Plus, this was one outside the mainstream, deemed kind of loopy. Still, when I announced at age eight that I intended to attend every week, that I wanted to be baptized a member, my parents eventually gave permission.
Were they thrilled? No. Not even close. Did they try to talk me out of it? Sure. I rarely share those details, since I consider them irrelevant to the outcome, but it wasn't all sunshine and roses. My family had reservations. My mom worried that being religious would equate to being judgmental. My dad said things like, "They talk about the importance of the family, but I think that this could tear the family apart." When I wanted to attend Sunday services as well as weekday activities, they worried that two meetings a week was too much. My dad also stressed out because Sunday had traditionally been our "pack a picnic and head into the hills" days, and we'd frequently be gone all day long. He was unamused when I countered this worry by asking, "Couldn't we do that on Saturdays?" To me, his answer of, "But we've always done it on Sunday" sounded like a non sequitur. I got to hear everyone's stories about how they "knew this one Mormon man/woman" and how they did something wrong or hurtful or stupid. My dad's family had some long standing beef with the church that went back to his childhood.
How did they handle all this? They let me join, without undue complaining. I could attend meetings weekly, but I had to wait until I was 12 to be baptized; that was OK with me. By that time, they were pretty comfortable that things would go on as usual at home; nobody had grand worries any more. By the time I was a teen, and my mom had to drive me to and from meetings and activities, it was just a normal part of our lives. They attended activities with me when invited. When my teacher suggested a 40 day sugar fast so that we could better understand Jesus' 40 day fast, my mother obsessively read labels and bought special groceries. When I had early morning religion classes in high school, my mother got up with me to make sure I had breakfast. They didn't worry about sending me on youth group trips or sleepovers, even co-ed ones.
Did they still think that my church was odd, my choices were odd, and sometimes hope that I'd decide that I didn't want to attend any more? Sure. Did they say nasty, snarky, passive-aggressive things? Never. Did they gripe to everyone else, outside of my earshot? No. They told people how nice members of my congregation were.
On the other hand, did I secretly throw out their coffee and wine, sigh and look mournful when they drank those things, when they swore, when they stayed home while I went to church? Never. Did I, or anyone else, pressure them to join, remark on how sad it was that I attended alone, tell them that their salvation was at stake? Nope. Not even once. It's called "being mature."
That's certainly not the only time we seriously disagreed. My dad was deeply upset that I had no interest in being an athlete. They were both deeply disappointed when I decided not to go to college after high school. They didn't always like my friends, and were not happy when I chose one of those friends as my roommate when I moved out. (Truth be told, they weren't happy about me moving out, period, and they disliked the girl in question.) (Also, they turned out to be right that living with her was a bad idea.) When I started dating my husband, my mother told me that she never wanted to meet my new boyfriend, and my dad referred to him as "that wild. bearded thing." They were not happy when I got married at 20, when I had a baby that year and another at 21, when we moved hundreds of miles away, when we bought a home in our new town, when I chose to be a stay at home mom... I mean, there are literally dozens of instances in which they would have made very different choices for me if they could.
(Despite the fact that they thought that I was too young, and the fact that my mother hated playing hostess, we held our wedding in my parents' back yard. I felt very supported.)
It should be noted that my extended family and my friends were often equally horrified, or even more distressed than my parents, by any or all of these events. Quite often the collective opinion was that I'd lost my mind, or that I had tragically low self esteem, or that I didn't know that I had alternatives. Also, my inlaws were not fond of me in the slightest. When we were engaged, if I walked into a room, my mother in law walked out.
The fact that my family soon learned to adore my husband (and kids), and that the years bore out the fact that I had not, in fact, ruined my life, is an aside here, instead of the point. The point is that my loved ones continued to love me and continued to treat me and my family the same way they would have if I had done things differently. This does not mean that everyone lived in a state of denial or that nobody voiced concerns, complaints or (my least favorite) advice. It means that the fact that we disagreed was totally secondary to the fact that we loved each other.
That, folks, is what "support" looks like.
I cannot stand it when I read some account or other of someone doing something that could be controversial - leaving medical school to become a jazz musician, or coming out as gay - their loved ones think that they're doing the right thing, and say, "I agree with you 100%! Live your truth! Follow your path! God wants you to do this!" and other people respond, "Now that's the way to support someone!" and "Anyone who tells you that you're wrong is not supporting you!" Listen up, everybody. That's not support. It's agreement. It's expected. It is the very definition, the epitome, of expected. Can you think of any instance in which someone will agree with you, will think that you're doing the right thing, and will say something derogatory or rude? Will they question you and offer alternatives if they think that you're already taking the best course of action? Good gravy, folks, it is the closest thing to a guarantee that if someone agrees with you, they'll say something positive. I repeat, that is agreement, not support.
Displaying expected behavior is not amazing or worthy of praise. It's a given, like the sun rising.
Actual support should be expected behavior, but alas, it is not.
A friend posted a question on their Facebook page about whether or not it was possible to civil and supportive if your family members disagreed on religion. This was my response.
I mean, how is this even a question? How are we not all clear on this?
When you look at my close friends, my lifelong friends, my relatives, people that I truly and sincerely adore, you'll find members of my religion. You'll also find drug addicts, drug traffickers, alcoholics, promiscuous people, transgender people, homosexual people, three pack a day smokers, cross dressers, unwed parents, people with multiple sexual partners/spouses, pagans, Jews, Evangelicals, atheists, Wiccans, people who fit more than one of those categories... all kinds of people whose lives do not mirror my standards. Why is this not a problem for me? Because they are my standards, that I have committed to live. They are not their standards.
And let it also be noted here, because this often gets overlooked, that these people love me, despite the fact that I live a vastly different life than they do.
Three of my children are adults, and the youngest is in high school, so now they sometimes hear details that I may not have shared when they were younger. They know now that one of their deeply loved bonus uncles spent years as a drug addicted, alcoholic, promiscuous manager of strippers. When they were children, I didn't let them in on those details, because they didn't need to know. They arguably don't need to know now, but we never ignored those things, or pretended that they didn't exist. We went the route of, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Sometimes, we said a lot of nothing.
We've always answered questions truthfully, though. When one of my daughters was working on a play that I was in, she asked one night, "Did (our makeup artist) used to be a woman?"
"Yes, he did. His name was (different) then. I knew him as (that person) when we did university theater together years ago."
"I though so. Don't tell him that I could tell."
"He's not touchy about it. He doesn't broadcast it, but he doesn't mind if you ask. Most of us knew him back then. It's not a secret." I don't know if she ever asked him anything - probably not - but it was just another piece of info, like what any of our actors did for a living.
I have never told my children to love someone despite our differences - I simply love that person. There's no need to qualify the feeling or the relationship.
I've never told them to choose only LDS friends, or to avoid certain people, or not to listen to a friend or relative if they have questions or want to explain their own beliefs or practices. When we've been invited to other churches, if our schedule allows we've said "yes." My kids have gone to Vacation Bible School with their friends. I have never displayed dismissive or superior attitudes because someone is different from me. I don't allow my kids to behave that way, either.
Someone once accused me of being "hateful" and "homophobic" because my religion teaches that homosexuality is aberrant behavior and because I believe that same sex unions (and perhaps even opposite gender civil unions) should be "partnerships" instead of "marriages." I felt compelled to point out that my toddlers were sitting on the lap of my gay, HIV+ best friend back in the 1980s, when people were terrified that the virus could be airborne - and, I might add, before my accuser was even born. I have little patience with anyone trying to give me a sensitivity lecture without knowing about my life. Don't assume that because you have one piece of information that you know me.
Do my kids always agree with me? No. As in so many other areas, I follow my mother's lead.
Two of my children have decided to leave my church. Keep in mind, according to my beliefs, this means that they have effectively opted out of the family unit. They may be in heaven, but they won't be my children in eternity. (This is, arguably, harder than my parents had it, since they had no beliefs about an afterlife or the state of one's eternal soul.) Is this painful? Deeply. Does it feel like rejection? Sure. Do I hope that one day, they change their minds? Absolutely. Do I love them less, criticize them more, insist that they move away, withdraw any financial help, tell their siblings to ignore them or plead with them, lie to our family and friends (or ask the children to do so), refuse to spend time with them or to take them on family trips, or engage in any other ridiculous, alienating behavior? No. Do I forbid discussion of religion? No. Do I continue to have weekly family night lessons that are religious in nature? Yes. I do things exactly the same way I always did. My choices are mine. Theirs are their own.
A friend asked not too long ago how I felt about something in my child's life. I replied with a wide smile, "I adore my child."
"Well, that's a very political answer," they said. Yes, it is. It's also the only thing that really matters. How I feel about my kids and their lives is 1. no one else's business, and 2. not going to change anything.
Thank you for your support.
OK, part of it is the problem of the English language itself, with its ridiculous rules and exceptions to rules. I'll grant you that.
Still. Let's talk about support. The actual word - "support."
We so often use it to mean "agree with." People will insist that "the way to support" someone is to tell them that you think that they're correct, or that they should be doing whatever they're doing. They will tell you that to "support" your family or friends, you need, in essence, to say to them, "You are right. You are absolutely right."
It makes me crazy.
Most of the times that I felt most supported by my parents were the times when we disagreed.
Look on dictionary.com. They supply 19 definitions for "support," and not one contains the words "agree" or "agreement." Number 3, though, says, "to undergo or endure, especially with patience or submission; tolerate." My parents did a lot of that.
I've shared before the fact that I started attending a church at age seven. I went with the neighbors. My parents did not belong to any religion. Both of them, especially my dad, distrusted organized religions as a whole. Plus, this was one outside the mainstream, deemed kind of loopy. Still, when I announced at age eight that I intended to attend every week, that I wanted to be baptized a member, my parents eventually gave permission.
Were they thrilled? No. Not even close. Did they try to talk me out of it? Sure. I rarely share those details, since I consider them irrelevant to the outcome, but it wasn't all sunshine and roses. My family had reservations. My mom worried that being religious would equate to being judgmental. My dad said things like, "They talk about the importance of the family, but I think that this could tear the family apart." When I wanted to attend Sunday services as well as weekday activities, they worried that two meetings a week was too much. My dad also stressed out because Sunday had traditionally been our "pack a picnic and head into the hills" days, and we'd frequently be gone all day long. He was unamused when I countered this worry by asking, "Couldn't we do that on Saturdays?" To me, his answer of, "But we've always done it on Sunday" sounded like a non sequitur. I got to hear everyone's stories about how they "knew this one Mormon man/woman" and how they did something wrong or hurtful or stupid. My dad's family had some long standing beef with the church that went back to his childhood.
How did they handle all this? They let me join, without undue complaining. I could attend meetings weekly, but I had to wait until I was 12 to be baptized; that was OK with me. By that time, they were pretty comfortable that things would go on as usual at home; nobody had grand worries any more. By the time I was a teen, and my mom had to drive me to and from meetings and activities, it was just a normal part of our lives. They attended activities with me when invited. When my teacher suggested a 40 day sugar fast so that we could better understand Jesus' 40 day fast, my mother obsessively read labels and bought special groceries. When I had early morning religion classes in high school, my mother got up with me to make sure I had breakfast. They didn't worry about sending me on youth group trips or sleepovers, even co-ed ones.
Did they still think that my church was odd, my choices were odd, and sometimes hope that I'd decide that I didn't want to attend any more? Sure. Did they say nasty, snarky, passive-aggressive things? Never. Did they gripe to everyone else, outside of my earshot? No. They told people how nice members of my congregation were.
On the other hand, did I secretly throw out their coffee and wine, sigh and look mournful when they drank those things, when they swore, when they stayed home while I went to church? Never. Did I, or anyone else, pressure them to join, remark on how sad it was that I attended alone, tell them that their salvation was at stake? Nope. Not even once. It's called "being mature."
That's certainly not the only time we seriously disagreed. My dad was deeply upset that I had no interest in being an athlete. They were both deeply disappointed when I decided not to go to college after high school. They didn't always like my friends, and were not happy when I chose one of those friends as my roommate when I moved out. (Truth be told, they weren't happy about me moving out, period, and they disliked the girl in question.) (Also, they turned out to be right that living with her was a bad idea.) When I started dating my husband, my mother told me that she never wanted to meet my new boyfriend, and my dad referred to him as "that wild. bearded thing." They were not happy when I got married at 20, when I had a baby that year and another at 21, when we moved hundreds of miles away, when we bought a home in our new town, when I chose to be a stay at home mom... I mean, there are literally dozens of instances in which they would have made very different choices for me if they could.
(Despite the fact that they thought that I was too young, and the fact that my mother hated playing hostess, we held our wedding in my parents' back yard. I felt very supported.)
It should be noted that my extended family and my friends were often equally horrified, or even more distressed than my parents, by any or all of these events. Quite often the collective opinion was that I'd lost my mind, or that I had tragically low self esteem, or that I didn't know that I had alternatives. Also, my inlaws were not fond of me in the slightest. When we were engaged, if I walked into a room, my mother in law walked out.
The fact that my family soon learned to adore my husband (and kids), and that the years bore out the fact that I had not, in fact, ruined my life, is an aside here, instead of the point. The point is that my loved ones continued to love me and continued to treat me and my family the same way they would have if I had done things differently. This does not mean that everyone lived in a state of denial or that nobody voiced concerns, complaints or (my least favorite) advice. It means that the fact that we disagreed was totally secondary to the fact that we loved each other.
That, folks, is what "support" looks like.
I cannot stand it when I read some account or other of someone doing something that could be controversial - leaving medical school to become a jazz musician, or coming out as gay - their loved ones think that they're doing the right thing, and say, "I agree with you 100%! Live your truth! Follow your path! God wants you to do this!" and other people respond, "Now that's the way to support someone!" and "Anyone who tells you that you're wrong is not supporting you!" Listen up, everybody. That's not support. It's agreement. It's expected. It is the very definition, the epitome, of expected. Can you think of any instance in which someone will agree with you, will think that you're doing the right thing, and will say something derogatory or rude? Will they question you and offer alternatives if they think that you're already taking the best course of action? Good gravy, folks, it is the closest thing to a guarantee that if someone agrees with you, they'll say something positive. I repeat, that is agreement, not support.
Displaying expected behavior is not amazing or worthy of praise. It's a given, like the sun rising.
Actual support should be expected behavior, but alas, it is not.
A friend posted a question on their Facebook page about whether or not it was possible to civil and supportive if your family members disagreed on religion. This was my response.
"When I joined my church at almost age 13, my parents and siblings were supportive (if baffled). I do not belong to the same religion as my parents, siblings, parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, or any of my 11 nieces and nephews (or my grandnieces and -nephews, either). (I also do not belong to the same political party as my husband.)
Having grown up in an environment where I was taught that all people have intrinsic value, unrelated to their beliefs or actions, and in which I was both encouraged to be respectful to everyone and to think for myself, I will never be able to understand people who think that everyone has to agree, or they can't truly be close, or love each other. I don't understand people who see differences of opinion as betrayal and rejection.
Having grown up in an environment where I was taught that all people have intrinsic value, unrelated to their beliefs or actions, and in which I was both encouraged to be respectful to everyone and to think for myself, I will never be able to understand people who think that everyone has to agree, or they can't truly be close, or love each other. I don't understand people who see differences of opinion as betrayal and rejection.
We recently returned from a naming ceremony for my grandniece, daughter of lesbian, Jewish parents. Someone actually said to my husband, "You would go when you don't agree with them?" Of course! They flew here and celebrated with us, with genuine happiness, when our daughter was married in an LDS temple. They don't agree with us or our religious practices, but it made no difference. That's just what reasonable people do for each other.
Most of my friends are pretty great about differences, too. When I invited a (very non-religious) family to my son's baptism, they didn't say, "We don't believe in that, and we think you're a little weird. It would make us too uncomfortable." They said, "What time do we need to be there, and what is the dress code?" When they invited us to their son's gay pagan handfasting (wedding) ceremony, we said about the same - "When should we get there, and what's the dress code?"
I know people who say they'd love people, regardless, but they'd be very upset if, say, their daughter announced a desire to be a nun. Unless someone is sacrificing children or planning other acts of violence, allowing them to freely practice their beliefs, or unbelief, benefits everyone."
I mean, how is this even a question? How are we not all clear on this?
When you look at my close friends, my lifelong friends, my relatives, people that I truly and sincerely adore, you'll find members of my religion. You'll also find drug addicts, drug traffickers, alcoholics, promiscuous people, transgender people, homosexual people, three pack a day smokers, cross dressers, unwed parents, people with multiple sexual partners/spouses, pagans, Jews, Evangelicals, atheists, Wiccans, people who fit more than one of those categories... all kinds of people whose lives do not mirror my standards. Why is this not a problem for me? Because they are my standards, that I have committed to live. They are not their standards.
And let it also be noted here, because this often gets overlooked, that these people love me, despite the fact that I live a vastly different life than they do.
Three of my children are adults, and the youngest is in high school, so now they sometimes hear details that I may not have shared when they were younger. They know now that one of their deeply loved bonus uncles spent years as a drug addicted, alcoholic, promiscuous manager of strippers. When they were children, I didn't let them in on those details, because they didn't need to know. They arguably don't need to know now, but we never ignored those things, or pretended that they didn't exist. We went the route of, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Sometimes, we said a lot of nothing.
We've always answered questions truthfully, though. When one of my daughters was working on a play that I was in, she asked one night, "Did (our makeup artist) used to be a woman?"
"Yes, he did. His name was (different) then. I knew him as (that person) when we did university theater together years ago."
"I though so. Don't tell him that I could tell."
"He's not touchy about it. He doesn't broadcast it, but he doesn't mind if you ask. Most of us knew him back then. It's not a secret." I don't know if she ever asked him anything - probably not - but it was just another piece of info, like what any of our actors did for a living.
I have never told my children to love someone despite our differences - I simply love that person. There's no need to qualify the feeling or the relationship.
I've never told them to choose only LDS friends, or to avoid certain people, or not to listen to a friend or relative if they have questions or want to explain their own beliefs or practices. When we've been invited to other churches, if our schedule allows we've said "yes." My kids have gone to Vacation Bible School with their friends. I have never displayed dismissive or superior attitudes because someone is different from me. I don't allow my kids to behave that way, either.
Someone once accused me of being "hateful" and "homophobic" because my religion teaches that homosexuality is aberrant behavior and because I believe that same sex unions (and perhaps even opposite gender civil unions) should be "partnerships" instead of "marriages." I felt compelled to point out that my toddlers were sitting on the lap of my gay, HIV+ best friend back in the 1980s, when people were terrified that the virus could be airborne - and, I might add, before my accuser was even born. I have little patience with anyone trying to give me a sensitivity lecture without knowing about my life. Don't assume that because you have one piece of information that you know me.
Do my kids always agree with me? No. As in so many other areas, I follow my mother's lead.
Two of my children have decided to leave my church. Keep in mind, according to my beliefs, this means that they have effectively opted out of the family unit. They may be in heaven, but they won't be my children in eternity. (This is, arguably, harder than my parents had it, since they had no beliefs about an afterlife or the state of one's eternal soul.) Is this painful? Deeply. Does it feel like rejection? Sure. Do I hope that one day, they change their minds? Absolutely. Do I love them less, criticize them more, insist that they move away, withdraw any financial help, tell their siblings to ignore them or plead with them, lie to our family and friends (or ask the children to do so), refuse to spend time with them or to take them on family trips, or engage in any other ridiculous, alienating behavior? No. Do I forbid discussion of religion? No. Do I continue to have weekly family night lessons that are religious in nature? Yes. I do things exactly the same way I always did. My choices are mine. Theirs are their own.
A friend asked not too long ago how I felt about something in my child's life. I replied with a wide smile, "I adore my child."
"Well, that's a very political answer," they said. Yes, it is. It's also the only thing that really matters. How I feel about my kids and their lives is 1. no one else's business, and 2. not going to change anything.
Thank you for your support.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Our medical insurance company sends us newsletters, as most do. Sometimes they're informative; sometimes they're forgettable.
Years ago, one newsletter had an article asking, "Are you an adult with undiagnosed ADD?" I read the article and then the quiz that accompanied it. Then I brought it to my husband. "Take a look at these questions," I said. The quiz was supposed to be similar to ones used by doctors to diagnose ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.
He read through, then chuckled. "That's ridiculous," he said. "That's not going to tell anybody anything."
"How do you figure?" I asked.
"Everyone will answer 'yes' to those questions."
Wow. Unexpected.
"I would answer 'no' to every single one of those questions."
His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if I'd just stepped out of a spaceship. Then he uttered the sentence that would have made me a multimillionaire if I had the proverbial nickel for every time I'd heard it: "Yeah? Well, that's just you."
Answering 6 out of 9 questions on the doctor's questionnaire is a positive ADD diagnosis. When my husband did go in to the doctor for a screening, he answered "yes" to 9 out of 9.
We've both learned a lot about ADD since then, but it's also obvious that our brain chemistry is very different. We occasionally have... interesting conversations.
I dislike driving in large cities, and I usually make my husband do it. Occasionally I'll end up doing it, like the time we flew into Las Vegas in order to visit our daughter at her summer job at Zion National Park. I'm familiar enough with Vegas that I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I did remind the kids to be quiet and non-distracting, at least until we got out of town.
As I was driving the unfamiliar rental car onto the freeway and out into traffic, it wasn't the kids who were distracting me. My husband had to push every button, open every compartment, adjust everything that could be adjusted. After saying, repeatedly, "Please leave that alone," and "That's really distracting - could you leave it be?" I bit his head off about half an hour later as we headed out of town and into the desert. "STOP THAT! I've asked you over and over to leave things ALONE! It's INCREDIBLY distracting! Just leave everything alone!"
He appeared startled, and baffled as to why I would be upset. Then he said, "What do you want me to do, just sit here?"
"YES! YES! That's EXACTLY what I want you to do! It's called 'being a passenger!' What, are you five years old?"
I cannot fathom why this would even be a question. He cannot fathom a world in which a person would willingly leave buttons and knobs, especially in a new and unfamiliar setting, alone.
Reading a similar quiz on sensory processing years ago, I thought that some of the choices on the multiple choice quiz were joke responses. You know how occasionally the writer will throw in an obviously wrong answer? The question might be, "Who was the first president of the United States?" and, for whatever reason, one of the responses will be, "Bugs Bunny." I was positive that one out of every four options was one of those "giveaway" responses that no one would choose.
It turns out that I was wrong. Not only did people choose those responses, but the person I was married to, lived with and combined genes with in order to reproduce was one of those people.
It turns out that I am on the high sensitivity end of the spectrum, and my husband is on the low sensitivity end. While I cringe and cover my ears when I hear sirens, my husband finds this odd. I avoid large crowds and loud noises; my husband finds those things to be exciting. It's a very interesting balancing act when one partner thinks that loud is obnoxious, and one partner thinks that quiet is boring.
High sensitivity people tend to need a large amount of personal space. (Ask my kids how often I say, "Respect the bubble!") Low sensitivity people tend not to know their own strength and therefore frequently break things. (Ask my husband why we cannot buy yard implements like shovels with wooden handles. We have to get fiberglass or steel.)
Naturally, we have kids like me and kids like him. I took my youngest daughter on a school field trip to an art museum a couple of years ago. One of the exhibits consisted of strobe lights going off in a darkened room. Two flashes, and I was crawling out of my skin. Thirty seconds in, I was feeling borderline violent. Even closing my eyes didn't help. The flashes went through my eyelids like they were paper. I could not wait to get out of the room; it was like being pummeled. If a sinister group ever wanted to brainwash me into violence, this would be a good first step. My daughter, on the other hand, kept saying things like, "This is so soothing," and, "This is going to put me to sleep." I finally had to drag her away.
Annoying sounds - alarms, high pitched anything, repetetive noises - make me crazier the longer they go on. The longer they go on, the more my husband tunes them out. Just about the time he has entirely eliminated them from his consciousness, they have driven me insane. I will snap, "Can you shut that thing up?" and nine times out of ten, it'll take him a moment to figure out what "thing" I'm even talking about.
Yeah, it's very interesting balancing these personalities in the same family.
I can at least partially imagine what it must be like to be my husband. He has very little frame of reference for what it's like to be me. Years ago, trying to describe to him what it feels like to be in total overload caused him to respond, "So, you're having too much fun. How terrible that must be." Saying, "It's like being struck" to describe how loud or piercing noises affected me had him responding, "So it's mild and easily ignored." NO! Not the point I was trying to make! I would never have described having someone hit me as easy to ignore!
It was very difficult for him to understand why I do not like thrill rides. He couldn't say, "You'd like it if you just tried it" because I have tried it. That's how I know that I hate it. It is nothing even approaching fun. It is terrifying and nauseating. Study after study shows that the brain waves of people like me have the same reaction to little kiddie rides as the brains of people like my husband have on extreme rides. He knows this is true, but can't imagine it. For my part, I tease him because in those photos taken on rides, he frequently had the same look on his face as he would have had sitting at home on our couch watching TV. Everyone else would be screaming, and he'd be almost blank. (In recent years, he's decided to pose for the cameras, so we know that he's having fun.)
Driving is also interesting. High sensitivity brains tend to see huge "DANGER! DANGER!" flags in situations where ordinary people see nothing amiss. By the time my husband wonders if something is dangerous, I'm in a full blown panic. I hate speed. I hate having vehicles too close to me - this translates not only as too close in front or behind me, but next to me at all. I wish that drivers who weave would spontaneously combust. Once, when parking, I kept insisting I was out of space and needed to stop, and my husband kept urging me to pull up farther. I kept saying, "I'm out of room!" and he kept saying, "You have plenty of room!" Finally, he snapped, "You have a full three inches to spare!" There's our problem. I cannot consider anything under three feet to be "plenty."
At least he's not an adrenaline junkie. I simply do not understand those people. All that, "You're not alive unless you're on the edge!" business causes me to roll my eyes. It's OK - they don't understand me, either. My sit-in-the-quiet-with-a-book sensibilities don't do it for them.
I cannot understand those scenes in movies where the girl squeals at the guy not to drive so fast, or not to do a loop in the plane, but he does and she ends up finding it adorable. If some guy ignored my terror and did something I'd asked him not to, I would not later melt over his sexiness. I'd decide that he was dense and self involved and I'd never want to go out with him again. He, on the other hand, would decide that I was alien and a stick in the mud, and he probably wouldn't miss me.
With luck, though, I'll never have to worry about dating situations again. Neither will my husband. After almost three decades, I think he and I have this marriage thing almost figured out.
Years ago, one newsletter had an article asking, "Are you an adult with undiagnosed ADD?" I read the article and then the quiz that accompanied it. Then I brought it to my husband. "Take a look at these questions," I said. The quiz was supposed to be similar to ones used by doctors to diagnose ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.
He read through, then chuckled. "That's ridiculous," he said. "That's not going to tell anybody anything."
"How do you figure?" I asked.
"Everyone will answer 'yes' to those questions."
Wow. Unexpected.
"I would answer 'no' to every single one of those questions."
His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if I'd just stepped out of a spaceship. Then he uttered the sentence that would have made me a multimillionaire if I had the proverbial nickel for every time I'd heard it: "Yeah? Well, that's just you."
Answering 6 out of 9 questions on the doctor's questionnaire is a positive ADD diagnosis. When my husband did go in to the doctor for a screening, he answered "yes" to 9 out of 9.
We've both learned a lot about ADD since then, but it's also obvious that our brain chemistry is very different. We occasionally have... interesting conversations.
I dislike driving in large cities, and I usually make my husband do it. Occasionally I'll end up doing it, like the time we flew into Las Vegas in order to visit our daughter at her summer job at Zion National Park. I'm familiar enough with Vegas that I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I did remind the kids to be quiet and non-distracting, at least until we got out of town.
As I was driving the unfamiliar rental car onto the freeway and out into traffic, it wasn't the kids who were distracting me. My husband had to push every button, open every compartment, adjust everything that could be adjusted. After saying, repeatedly, "Please leave that alone," and "That's really distracting - could you leave it be?" I bit his head off about half an hour later as we headed out of town and into the desert. "STOP THAT! I've asked you over and over to leave things ALONE! It's INCREDIBLY distracting! Just leave everything alone!"
He appeared startled, and baffled as to why I would be upset. Then he said, "What do you want me to do, just sit here?"
"YES! YES! That's EXACTLY what I want you to do! It's called 'being a passenger!' What, are you five years old?"
I cannot fathom why this would even be a question. He cannot fathom a world in which a person would willingly leave buttons and knobs, especially in a new and unfamiliar setting, alone.
Reading a similar quiz on sensory processing years ago, I thought that some of the choices on the multiple choice quiz were joke responses. You know how occasionally the writer will throw in an obviously wrong answer? The question might be, "Who was the first president of the United States?" and, for whatever reason, one of the responses will be, "Bugs Bunny." I was positive that one out of every four options was one of those "giveaway" responses that no one would choose.
It turns out that I was wrong. Not only did people choose those responses, but the person I was married to, lived with and combined genes with in order to reproduce was one of those people.
It turns out that I am on the high sensitivity end of the spectrum, and my husband is on the low sensitivity end. While I cringe and cover my ears when I hear sirens, my husband finds this odd. I avoid large crowds and loud noises; my husband finds those things to be exciting. It's a very interesting balancing act when one partner thinks that loud is obnoxious, and one partner thinks that quiet is boring.
High sensitivity people tend to need a large amount of personal space. (Ask my kids how often I say, "Respect the bubble!") Low sensitivity people tend not to know their own strength and therefore frequently break things. (Ask my husband why we cannot buy yard implements like shovels with wooden handles. We have to get fiberglass or steel.)
Naturally, we have kids like me and kids like him. I took my youngest daughter on a school field trip to an art museum a couple of years ago. One of the exhibits consisted of strobe lights going off in a darkened room. Two flashes, and I was crawling out of my skin. Thirty seconds in, I was feeling borderline violent. Even closing my eyes didn't help. The flashes went through my eyelids like they were paper. I could not wait to get out of the room; it was like being pummeled. If a sinister group ever wanted to brainwash me into violence, this would be a good first step. My daughter, on the other hand, kept saying things like, "This is so soothing," and, "This is going to put me to sleep." I finally had to drag her away.
Annoying sounds - alarms, high pitched anything, repetetive noises - make me crazier the longer they go on. The longer they go on, the more my husband tunes them out. Just about the time he has entirely eliminated them from his consciousness, they have driven me insane. I will snap, "Can you shut that thing up?" and nine times out of ten, it'll take him a moment to figure out what "thing" I'm even talking about.
Yeah, it's very interesting balancing these personalities in the same family.
I can at least partially imagine what it must be like to be my husband. He has very little frame of reference for what it's like to be me. Years ago, trying to describe to him what it feels like to be in total overload caused him to respond, "So, you're having too much fun. How terrible that must be." Saying, "It's like being struck" to describe how loud or piercing noises affected me had him responding, "So it's mild and easily ignored." NO! Not the point I was trying to make! I would never have described having someone hit me as easy to ignore!
It was very difficult for him to understand why I do not like thrill rides. He couldn't say, "You'd like it if you just tried it" because I have tried it. That's how I know that I hate it. It is nothing even approaching fun. It is terrifying and nauseating. Study after study shows that the brain waves of people like me have the same reaction to little kiddie rides as the brains of people like my husband have on extreme rides. He knows this is true, but can't imagine it. For my part, I tease him because in those photos taken on rides, he frequently had the same look on his face as he would have had sitting at home on our couch watching TV. Everyone else would be screaming, and he'd be almost blank. (In recent years, he's decided to pose for the cameras, so we know that he's having fun.)
Driving is also interesting. High sensitivity brains tend to see huge "DANGER! DANGER!" flags in situations where ordinary people see nothing amiss. By the time my husband wonders if something is dangerous, I'm in a full blown panic. I hate speed. I hate having vehicles too close to me - this translates not only as too close in front or behind me, but next to me at all. I wish that drivers who weave would spontaneously combust. Once, when parking, I kept insisting I was out of space and needed to stop, and my husband kept urging me to pull up farther. I kept saying, "I'm out of room!" and he kept saying, "You have plenty of room!" Finally, he snapped, "You have a full three inches to spare!" There's our problem. I cannot consider anything under three feet to be "plenty."
At least he's not an adrenaline junkie. I simply do not understand those people. All that, "You're not alive unless you're on the edge!" business causes me to roll my eyes. It's OK - they don't understand me, either. My sit-in-the-quiet-with-a-book sensibilities don't do it for them.
I cannot understand those scenes in movies where the girl squeals at the guy not to drive so fast, or not to do a loop in the plane, but he does and she ends up finding it adorable. If some guy ignored my terror and did something I'd asked him not to, I would not later melt over his sexiness. I'd decide that he was dense and self involved and I'd never want to go out with him again. He, on the other hand, would decide that I was alien and a stick in the mud, and he probably wouldn't miss me.
With luck, though, I'll never have to worry about dating situations again. Neither will my husband. After almost three decades, I think he and I have this marriage thing almost figured out.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Compatibility, or Lack Thereof
On paper, my husband and I are not a good match. Oh, sure, our astrological signs, at least as far as the Chinese are concerned, are compatible, but most indicators say otherwise. We'd been married for only a few months when I took one of those magazine quizzes designed to tell you compatibility based on background comparison. It rated our compatibility as low and our chances of staying together as "grim." Honestly! We got a good chuckle out of that.
There are many ways to classify people. For instance, some people's sensory awareness is high, some people's is low, and most people fall in the middle. Of course, mine is high and his is low. I swear, I have the hearing of a dog - many supposedly ordinary sounds are absolutely painful. Sirens are misery. Loud, shrill or sudden sounds don't just startle me, they honestly hurt. I can't drive next to a motorcycle without plugging my ears. Things my husband can't smell drive me to distraction. My beloved, on the other hand, is just this side of oblivious. Tapping his arm to get his attention has to escalate to an almost bruising level before he finally notices and gives you a distracted, "Hmm?" I find large crowds, loud music and flashing lights to be absolutely exhausting; he finds them to be exhilarating and energizing. Just as I'm ready to collapse in a heap of fatigue, he's just getting revved up. The longer an unpleasant sound - say, an alarm - goes on, the more it shreds my nerves, while the more time it sounds, the more my husband relegates it to background, white noise and finally fails to even register it.
"Shut that thing up!" I'll yell, and he'll look at me, puzzled - "What thing?"
The problem with this is that he tends to think I'm overreacting to any given scenario, while I find him to have all the sensitivity of a rock. This also bodes badly for long term cohabitation.
He likes his beef practically still mooing; I like mine almost turned to leather. He would happily have bread or rolls with every meal; I tend to forget that bread exists unless I'm making a sandwich. He likes to sleep in a cold room; I prefer mine almost hot. He loves having a fan blowing on him; I hate the sensation of wind on my skin. I can't even sleep with my head on my arms, because my breathing blows the hair on my arms and makes me miserable.
Have you ever taken the "What Color Are You?" test, and read about your personality? Dan is a yellow who very much wants to be a red. I used to test at 60% blue, 40 % white, but as I get older I test more as 60% white, 40 % blue. I think I have 1 red and 1 yellow answer on my entire test.
Watching us make a joint decision is either comical or infuriating. The only reason I entertain any idea is to make and act on a decision. I want the time weighing options to be brief, and feel that it exists only as a stepping stone to taking action. Not Dan; for him, the entire point is weighing options. He can happily weigh options for literally years. Making an actual decision causes him stress, and acting on it causes even more stress, because, as he sees it, you've now "eliminated all your options." He cannot imagine why I spend all my time actively trying to eliminate options. I cannot imagine why he is willing to spend enormous amounts of time and energy thinking about anything unless he intends to do something about it.
The more important, and the more permanent, a decision is, the more it ties him in knots. He will happily spend x number of dollars on a restaurant meal, but balk at spending the exact same amount on clothing because if he buys something physical, he'll be "stuck with it," whereas if he has a lousy meal, well, he can rectify that in a matter of hours.
He is afraid that any decision he makes might be the wrong one. I find this to be fear of commitment of the most profound sort. I think that very few questions even have a wrong answer - who cares if you get the brown one or the green one, as long as you get one? If you're going on vacation, you absolutely must pick a destination, or you're going nowhere. Most of life is not "Sophie's Choice."
Whenever we've bought a house, I have been unable to imagine signing the papers unless I can imagine being 90 years old in the house. The very first time we bought a place, I had a one year old and one on the way, and I checked out what high school they'd be going to and where the bus stop was. We were still packing up the apartment when Dan started saying, "When we sell this house..." It exhausted me to even think about. "We don't even live there yet! How can you think about selling it?" He was baffled. "Do you want to be stuck there forever? Don't you want something nicer?"
Occasionally, someone will ask me how Dan ever got married or had children. Some of them aren't quite sure whether or not to believe my answer, which is that he was able to because he didn't think it would be permanent. Between the belief he grew up with that monogamy is unnatural to his belief that no one was ever actually going to like him enough to live with him long term, he figured it was pretty much a done deal that one day he'd come home to an empty house. That was OK by him - he took an "it'll be fun while it lasts" approach.
I, on the other hand, was crystal clear on the fact that marrying this man meant that some day I might be changing his adult diapers. I certainly didn't plan on having children with a weekend dad.
After a few years, adding kids and mortgages to the mix, it dawned on him that we were always there when he came home. Don't get me wrong, there are absolute deal breakers that would have me out so fast that I didn't even stop to pack, and he knows what they are, but in their absence I'm in it for the long haul. He had never bothered to make a long term decision, assuming that he wouldn't have to. Now, and from his point of view, very suddenly, he had to make a permanent, lasting, no do-overs decision. Was this the life he wanted, or wasn't it?
It freaked him out. He lost his mind a little. (Especially since he'd always thought, for reasons unclear even to him, that he'd be dead long before he reached middle age.)
After deciding that he really did want this life and this family, he was almost giddy. I have to admit, my reaction was more that he was coming late to the party. Nice of you to finally show up, hon, we've all been waiting for you.
I asked him, years later, what in the world he'd been thinking. "Nobody stayed married," he said, pointing out that he'd come of age in the late 70s. I have to admit, society's track record in this regard is not sterling, and the 70s didn't do much to help.
Fast forward: our next wedding anniversary will be our 25th. It's not actually that much different than the 24th or 26th or any other number, really, but I still think it's a big deal. In a few weeks, we will climb on a cruise ship with all of our children and our son in law, who'll be celebrating his first wedding anniversary with our daughter. We'll go to the Bahamas, snorkel, eat too much and get sunburned. It will be well deserved.
Happy anniversary, Dan, and many more to come.
(Yeah, we enjoyed that cruise.)
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Growing Up Is Hard To Do
My youngest daughter was asked to speak in church last weekend. I think she did a great job. She took a great deal of her talk from published sources, so she did a lot of reading quotes instead of presenting her own take on the subject, but why reinvent the wheel? If you find a source who says it eloquently, quote them. She was poised, spoke clearly and, like the actress that she is, knew what and how to emphasize.
Afterwards, someone who frequently sees her in her class at church said to me, "She does a much better job reading things she's familiar with instead of reading straight from the scriptures. She ought to read her scriptures out loud more often." Well, everyone should probably read their scriptures more, but that's another subject. When she's asked to read a scripture passage aloud in class, she stumbles and fumbles and stutters and asks for help. I smiled and nodded; every parent spends time doing that when listening to others describe their kid(s). You see, when asked to read a scripture out loud at home, or even in a class I'm in, she does it beautifully, handling even the foot long Hebrew names better than many adults. When her parents aren't around, though, you'd swear she was a struggling reader who'd never even seen a Bible.
It took me back to watching her oldest sister give a talk in the children's meeting at church. She'd chosen to read a story out of a church magazine. She couldn't have been any older than seven, because we moved to a different town the summer after she completed first grade. Again, practicing this story at home, she sounded great. Once she got to church, she sounded borderline illiterate.
Most of the time when a child read something aloud during these meetings, one of the leaders (or a parent) would stand next to them and whisper the words in their ears, and they'd repeat it into the microphone. This was especially true with the younger children, who weren't confident readers yet. I knew my child, and knew she didn't need me.
I watched her hesitate and mumble for a few sentences, then stood up and whispered in her ear, "You can do it." It was like flipping a switch. Suddenly her reading was smooth, clear, precise. She had no trouble with any of the pronunciations, understood the punctuation, and sounded like a child years older than she was. Afterward, all the leaders and teachers swooned over her, telling her what a great job she did. Instead of basking in the praise, she stared at the floor and fidgeted.
One of the leaders said to me, "Sometimes all it takes to shine is to hear that your parents have confidence in you." Again, I smiled and nodded. This was most certainly not how this daughter viewed things.
She was furious with me. I had caused her to stand out, to look DIFFERENT than the other kids, in public, and that was unforgivable. Especially at that age, in kindergarten and first grade, we had lots of discussions that began with her saying, "Everybody else..." She HATED the fact that she stood out. She had insisted that instead of the beautiful coloring she did at home, "In school, you're SUPPOSED to scribble. Everybody does." The same went for any other skill; it fell on deaf ears to tell her that the other kids were doing the best they could, and she should do the best SHE could. "It should all be THE SAME," she would insist.
She was also angry because I had deprived her of the attention of the leaders, the one on one of having somebody focus on just her instead of on a large group of kids. She didn't see that with all the praise she was getting, she was getting more attention, positive attention, and that it came from every adult in the room, not just one. She wanted the leader standing next to her, whispering in her ear. Plus, I had made her stand out as different, and that was just wrong.
My middle daughter has always had a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome, never feeling quite as though she got as much attention, recognition, praise or whatever else as she wanted. She frequently voiced the opinion that, "Things are only special when the oldest and the youngest do them." Even though we insisted that accomplishments were special whenever anyone achieved them, she'd roll her eyes and tell us we were wrong.
My son is happiest sitting quietly in the back of a classroom, being unnoticed. He does not like to be singled out. He blows most praise, from any source, off; he's such a total perfectionist that he doesn't think that much is praiseworthy. (He constantly tells me that people's standards are too low. Every now and then, he'll look at what the average person can do as compared to what he's done and announce, "People are idiots!" I try to convince him otherwise, but am frequently thwarted by 1. people who are idiots and 2. his conviction that my standards are too low.) He has made an armchair diagnosis of his little sister - "narcissistic personality disorder."
Ah, my youngest; she deeply craves attention. Mostly, she wants people to think that she's adorable. Somewhere in both her conscious and unconscious mind, she remembers when people found her mere existence adorable. As the youngest, she noticed that when we were out in public, when people swooned over any of the children it was over her, the baby. Everything she said, did and was had adoration heaped on it by the ton. Every baby experiences this.
When my nephew Jeremy was nine, he asked one day, "Aunt Sherrie? How come everybody just loves babies, but once you get older nobody cares?" At that point, he was watching the phenomenon from the opposite perspective; he was the oldest child in our household of five children. It was my son, the baby, who was receiving the swooning and adoration at that point. We'd be out in public with all five kids, little blond stair steps, and all people would see was, "Oh, look at that baby! He's so cute!" Sure, he was adorable, but so were the big kids.
I explained my belief: "I think it's because babies are all potential, so people can imagine them as anything they want. They've never disagreed with someone, or done anything that would offend them. People look at a baby and imagine the very best of everything. Plus, it's just hardwired into people to love babies - otherwise, they'd never be willing to deal with all the work and exhaustion and sacrifice of caring for a completely helpless, tiny person. It's a survival of the human race thing."
I don't know if it helped Jeremy, but I think it was a good explanation.
My youngest simply knows that it used to be an absolute given that her place in the universe was 1. at its center and 2. surrounded by adoring subjects. When she hit about seven years old, she noticed that it was no longer a given that she was darling. People did not automatically swoon over her mere presence or existence. She became convinced that it was because she wasn't cute enough any more. I remember watching her get her Girl Scout cookie order form one year and sighing, "I won't sell as many cookies this year. I used to be cuter." Half of her life has been a pre-adolescent version of the midlife crisis.
She recently had to move up from the children's organization at church to the youth organization. She was not thrilled. She insisted, frequently and loudly, that getting older meant, "I'll be BORING!" ("Boring," by the way, is worse than death.) She tries in vain to recapture what it felt like to be three and precocious. Most kids her age exult in leaving behind the little kids; she is sure that if she's surrounded by younger children, she'll be cute by association. She's warming up to the whole youth group thing, which is good. I suspect a lot of that has to do with great leaders and other youth, but a lot has to do with being the youngest one in the group. That is her comfort zone.
Her older siblings watch her exhibit some immature behavior and cringe. "Why does she DO that?" they ask. I remind them all that they did immature things when they were younger. Frequently they say things like, "Yes, but I was stupid," or "I have no idea what I was thinking." Well, OK, I tell them, it's the same for her. Eventually she'll "get" it.
"Can you get her to stop that?" they ask. They do not like the answer - "No, I can't." A couple of days ago I asked her older sister, "Did you listen to me all the time, and do what I told you to without question?" She snorted at the ridiculousness of this.
"NO!!"
"Well, neither does she."
I have to admit, I have more patience than I otherwise would because I do have older kids. They're adults now, delightful adults, so I know that no phase lasts forever. This too shall pass. If I didn't know that, sometimes being a parent and saying things for the 1,849th time, this week alone, would drive me literally insane.
Eventually, my "baby" will discover that we have a culture in which teens are considered the height of attractiveness. She will, I hope, be delighted to be a teen. She will discover that growing up means more freedom, more choices, not being boring.
Oh please, oh please.
I'll settle for anything that is progress toward age appropriateness, and pride in getting there, and worry about how she'll eventually deal with the loss of youth, the youth she now does not want, when we get there.
Afterwards, someone who frequently sees her in her class at church said to me, "She does a much better job reading things she's familiar with instead of reading straight from the scriptures. She ought to read her scriptures out loud more often." Well, everyone should probably read their scriptures more, but that's another subject. When she's asked to read a scripture passage aloud in class, she stumbles and fumbles and stutters and asks for help. I smiled and nodded; every parent spends time doing that when listening to others describe their kid(s). You see, when asked to read a scripture out loud at home, or even in a class I'm in, she does it beautifully, handling even the foot long Hebrew names better than many adults. When her parents aren't around, though, you'd swear she was a struggling reader who'd never even seen a Bible.
It took me back to watching her oldest sister give a talk in the children's meeting at church. She'd chosen to read a story out of a church magazine. She couldn't have been any older than seven, because we moved to a different town the summer after she completed first grade. Again, practicing this story at home, she sounded great. Once she got to church, she sounded borderline illiterate.
Most of the time when a child read something aloud during these meetings, one of the leaders (or a parent) would stand next to them and whisper the words in their ears, and they'd repeat it into the microphone. This was especially true with the younger children, who weren't confident readers yet. I knew my child, and knew she didn't need me.
I watched her hesitate and mumble for a few sentences, then stood up and whispered in her ear, "You can do it." It was like flipping a switch. Suddenly her reading was smooth, clear, precise. She had no trouble with any of the pronunciations, understood the punctuation, and sounded like a child years older than she was. Afterward, all the leaders and teachers swooned over her, telling her what a great job she did. Instead of basking in the praise, she stared at the floor and fidgeted.
One of the leaders said to me, "Sometimes all it takes to shine is to hear that your parents have confidence in you." Again, I smiled and nodded. This was most certainly not how this daughter viewed things.
She was furious with me. I had caused her to stand out, to look DIFFERENT than the other kids, in public, and that was unforgivable. Especially at that age, in kindergarten and first grade, we had lots of discussions that began with her saying, "Everybody else..." She HATED the fact that she stood out. She had insisted that instead of the beautiful coloring she did at home, "In school, you're SUPPOSED to scribble. Everybody does." The same went for any other skill; it fell on deaf ears to tell her that the other kids were doing the best they could, and she should do the best SHE could. "It should all be THE SAME," she would insist.
She was also angry because I had deprived her of the attention of the leaders, the one on one of having somebody focus on just her instead of on a large group of kids. She didn't see that with all the praise she was getting, she was getting more attention, positive attention, and that it came from every adult in the room, not just one. She wanted the leader standing next to her, whispering in her ear. Plus, I had made her stand out as different, and that was just wrong.
My middle daughter has always had a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome, never feeling quite as though she got as much attention, recognition, praise or whatever else as she wanted. She frequently voiced the opinion that, "Things are only special when the oldest and the youngest do them." Even though we insisted that accomplishments were special whenever anyone achieved them, she'd roll her eyes and tell us we were wrong.
My son is happiest sitting quietly in the back of a classroom, being unnoticed. He does not like to be singled out. He blows most praise, from any source, off; he's such a total perfectionist that he doesn't think that much is praiseworthy. (He constantly tells me that people's standards are too low. Every now and then, he'll look at what the average person can do as compared to what he's done and announce, "People are idiots!" I try to convince him otherwise, but am frequently thwarted by 1. people who are idiots and 2. his conviction that my standards are too low.) He has made an armchair diagnosis of his little sister - "narcissistic personality disorder."
Ah, my youngest; she deeply craves attention. Mostly, she wants people to think that she's adorable. Somewhere in both her conscious and unconscious mind, she remembers when people found her mere existence adorable. As the youngest, she noticed that when we were out in public, when people swooned over any of the children it was over her, the baby. Everything she said, did and was had adoration heaped on it by the ton. Every baby experiences this.
When my nephew Jeremy was nine, he asked one day, "Aunt Sherrie? How come everybody just loves babies, but once you get older nobody cares?" At that point, he was watching the phenomenon from the opposite perspective; he was the oldest child in our household of five children. It was my son, the baby, who was receiving the swooning and adoration at that point. We'd be out in public with all five kids, little blond stair steps, and all people would see was, "Oh, look at that baby! He's so cute!" Sure, he was adorable, but so were the big kids.
I explained my belief: "I think it's because babies are all potential, so people can imagine them as anything they want. They've never disagreed with someone, or done anything that would offend them. People look at a baby and imagine the very best of everything. Plus, it's just hardwired into people to love babies - otherwise, they'd never be willing to deal with all the work and exhaustion and sacrifice of caring for a completely helpless, tiny person. It's a survival of the human race thing."
I don't know if it helped Jeremy, but I think it was a good explanation.
My youngest simply knows that it used to be an absolute given that her place in the universe was 1. at its center and 2. surrounded by adoring subjects. When she hit about seven years old, she noticed that it was no longer a given that she was darling. People did not automatically swoon over her mere presence or existence. She became convinced that it was because she wasn't cute enough any more. I remember watching her get her Girl Scout cookie order form one year and sighing, "I won't sell as many cookies this year. I used to be cuter." Half of her life has been a pre-adolescent version of the midlife crisis.
She recently had to move up from the children's organization at church to the youth organization. She was not thrilled. She insisted, frequently and loudly, that getting older meant, "I'll be BORING!" ("Boring," by the way, is worse than death.) She tries in vain to recapture what it felt like to be three and precocious. Most kids her age exult in leaving behind the little kids; she is sure that if she's surrounded by younger children, she'll be cute by association. She's warming up to the whole youth group thing, which is good. I suspect a lot of that has to do with great leaders and other youth, but a lot has to do with being the youngest one in the group. That is her comfort zone.
Her older siblings watch her exhibit some immature behavior and cringe. "Why does she DO that?" they ask. I remind them all that they did immature things when they were younger. Frequently they say things like, "Yes, but I was stupid," or "I have no idea what I was thinking." Well, OK, I tell them, it's the same for her. Eventually she'll "get" it.
"Can you get her to stop that?" they ask. They do not like the answer - "No, I can't." A couple of days ago I asked her older sister, "Did you listen to me all the time, and do what I told you to without question?" She snorted at the ridiculousness of this.
"NO!!"
"Well, neither does she."
I have to admit, I have more patience than I otherwise would because I do have older kids. They're adults now, delightful adults, so I know that no phase lasts forever. This too shall pass. If I didn't know that, sometimes being a parent and saying things for the 1,849th time, this week alone, would drive me literally insane.
Eventually, my "baby" will discover that we have a culture in which teens are considered the height of attractiveness. She will, I hope, be delighted to be a teen. She will discover that growing up means more freedom, more choices, not being boring.
Oh please, oh please.
I'll settle for anything that is progress toward age appropriateness, and pride in getting there, and worry about how she'll eventually deal with the loss of youth, the youth she now does not want, when we get there.
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