Mama Bean projects herself into her parenting (surprise, surprise)

I think I would rather have my child get hit or scratched or pushed than have them told, "You can't be in our group" which is the same as "I don't accept you" which is the same as "You are not loved." (And vice versa, I'd rather my kid hit someone than say something like that.)

Part of this is due to my parenting aptitude. I know, more or less, how to deal with physical hurts. I have a script to follow, and it's a pretty black and white no-tolerance issue. "We don't use our hands that way. That is not okay" etc. etc. I feel like this is the first script of parenting I learned. And it's usually pretty easy to solve the instigating problem - figure out what toy needs to be shared, what distraction will be sufficient, whether a nap or a snack is the solution to all problems (as it so often is.) (See? This is where we learn that food solves problems. Oi.)

I don't have a script for emotional hurts - it's so much greyer. On the one hand, there is the fact that words hurt. On the other hand, it isn't realistic that all children will be friends with all others, and I don't want to force friendship. That would be invalidating their feelings. But how to explain tact and diplomacy and respectful words to a three year old?

I suppose it comes down to separating emotions, which happen and can't be denied, from behaviours, which are choices, and some should most certainly be denied. Physical wrongs are motivated by feelings, too - anger, frustration, envy. The script is not "We don't get angry or upset when someone takes out toy." The script is about not turning that anger into a violent action. So I suppose it can likewise be taught that, though we may not like someone or may not wish to play with them, we don't turn those feelings into mean words or cruel behaviour.

Part of it is my children's developmental status, also. A physical hurt produces a well-identified area of pain, sometimes even a visible mark. They know the word(s) for that pain, they know how to point/show it to me, and they know a kiss and a hug (and maybe a Spiderman band-aid) will make it go away. Certainly time fades all such wounds. But, emotional hurt is still so confusing and nebulous - they don't have the words, it's hurts somewhere strange inside, and a band-aid will not help. Sometimes not even a hug, if it's not from the person who produced the hurt, y'know?

And here I feel my own emotional immaturity is my own worst enemy. I get tripped up in my explanations because I can't even explain these hurts to myself. To me, not being accepted is the greatest hurt. Has been so since childhood. Thus, when my children are hurt in this way, I lose all perspective.

[A lengthy aside: the adopted child is always aware of feeling Other and Outside, and they are terrified of being excluded or rejected. It is the nature of starting in one family and ending up in another; the sense that all relationships are transitory and fragile. I believe this feeling is permanent, that is, it cannot be loved away, and if it is ignored, all the worse. If you know or love an adopted person, the way you love them should acknowledge this fear in them - even if they don't have the words to name their fear.]

Part of it is, naturally, that my children are beloved to me, and I want them to be beloved by everyone. I was thinking the other day that, in this very shallow way, I want for my children socially what I never had - to be part of the In Crowd, part of the Popular Kids. I don't want them to be social outcasts, geeky pariahs, nerdy loners - because that hurts. But let's be honest, I want it all for them, just as we all do - the academic success of nerdiness, the social success of popularity. (And I do know these things are not mutually exclusive, I experienced a strange such mixture in my high school years.)

But life being what it is, the truth is they will be disliked and/or discluded, often. And my parenting strategy (and I'm using that word loosely...) feels like this nebulous mixture of a) hiding them away b) helping them accept and adapt and rise above these hard truths of life c) teaching them to love themselves as much as I love them (or because I love them?)

Hiding them in/with/behind my love is not a complete solution. That is, I feel with certainty it is not enough to respond to social hurts with, "Don't worry, baby, mommy loves you." Because I do want my love to be their place of safety, their place to hide, but I don't want running away and hiding to be their default solution to trouble (of any sort.) I am so prone to running and hiding, and it is maladaptive. How to teach them to stand on their own and fight on their own, when I cannot do these things myself? (And, deeper down, this is not a complete solution because I am human, I will make mistakes, and I will disappoint them; and an imperfect love is small comfort in the face of a cruel world. But here I may simply be projecting. Ha! Of course I'm projecting.)

Accepting an imperfect world is also not a complete solution. Taken too far, it normalizes bad behaviour - what starts as "Oh that's just how kids are" too easily becomes teaching them it's okay to turn a blind eye to injustice, it's okay to ignore (or worse deny) the rights of the oppressed, because "Hey, we live in a crappy world. Get over it!" What a strange dance it is to learn where it's a waste of time to try and where it's a wise investment of one's unique ability to change the world.

And frankly, this notion of self-esteem has been so diluted and distorted, if it offers any solution, I personally cannot parse it out. I know that my love is a foundation for developing their self love. I would never want my love to encourage arrogance. I don't want to deny the reality of The Bell Curve - that we are all simultaneously special stars and also all pretty average. Special average stars of normalcy. But each with, yes, this opportunity to change their own little world. More of this tricky balance! Finding that just-right-amount of confidence, not too little, not too much.

Sheesh, what a lot of words, and I've gone off track. All this to say, life is socially complicated, my childhood was marred by hurts from this, I thought it'd be easier in adulthood but it's not, so I project my social insecurities onto my children, and feel helpless in the face of their social hurts, but I've got to get it together for their sake, if not my own.

Mama Bean lurves her rhetoric metre

rhetoric noun: 1. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. 2. language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience. [more in-depth at the wiki]

How sensitive is your rhetoric meter?

Rhetoric isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but propaganda seems excessive. (Almost) None of the information we 'download' these days is pure fact, free of opinion, or some underlying agenda. Well, that seems harsh, too. It all has a message, anyway, it seems. I feel. There, this is all just my rhetoric, too.

This is the problem with calling this the information age. It's not really just information. And as a parent, I'm faced with how to teach my children to navigate an informational playing field vastly larger than the one I learned on, which was already larger than that of my parents. I suppose I could rely on the old chestnut 'don't believe everything you read' but it's harder than ever to control what enters our family environment to be read. I think I lean towards less enforcement/freer access, but this will mean more discussion, more tough questions with no answers, and more time. And I must keep in mind the time-line - that the skills of literacy, comprehension, critical analysis, they build on each other, much more slowly than I liked (going through it) or will like (trying to help my children through it.) And then too also, it's even more critical for kids to understand this, to be actively critically analyzing their environment, at a younger age than me or you, because the consequences (seem to) get more dire with each generation (is that in my imagination?) 

I'm not sure I can accurately remember my own trajectory in Rhetoric Management. I suppose I built those literacy and comprehension skills through my undergrad, and started a foundation of critical thinking skills, but I didn't gain any proficiency then. I have thought of four major areas where I find it most important, and I can roughly put them in order. [ETA: I started this post when Bean was a baby, it originally referred to teaching "my child" and I'm only getting around to finishing it now. For pete's sake, none of the personal pronouns are even capitalized! /sigh]

Area the first: Religion/Christianity. Boy, was this a trial by fire, when I moved to the US midwest (during the run-up to the 2004 election no less, but we'll get to that later.) I had often felt buffeted by conflicting positions and rhetoric during my angsty teenaged faith, and had trouble reconciling what I felt was right with the oh-so-persuasive arguments of more extreme opinions. I had to learn to trust myself, and my interpretation. I had to know it was okay to read a persuasive argument for something I disagreed with, and just politely acknowledge it was well argued without feeling the core of my beliefs had been shaken. I had to stop taking things personally. People have opinions, people like to share them, people now have the internet to do so freely and loudly and without restraint - but I don't have to listen, and even when I do, I don't have to feel like my beliefs are being attacked or destroyed or even challenged. Because it's just their opinion. We can all be grown-ups and exist in this world together with different opinions just fine.

[Here I'll add: since 2004, the internet itself has matured in many ways, I find particularly when it comes to religious discourse. I think in large part because we've all conglomerated into our meta-tribes, and there's so. much. room. for as many small niches of religious thought, it's really fantastic. So not only is it easy to ignore rhetoric you disagree with (and I mean truly ignore, without trolling) but it's also really easy to find those you do agree with, and just (virtually) pet and rub each other all over with mutual love-festing.]

It's a good thing I got a handle on that, because I was about to get a crash course in American partisan politics - area the second. I truly didn't have a clue. I thought Canadian and US politics were pretty similar, 'cause we're pretty similar in general. Not so at election time. It was (toooooooo) easy to get caught up, to get emotionally invested. It was easy to be (utterly, distractedly) engaged by so. much. rhetoric. But after a few exhausting, commercial-filled months, man oh man did I have to turn that shit off. I had to handle the rhetoric, and remember that opinion is just opinion, even in these matters of Great National Importance (and not for my nation, mind you lol.) I had to remember that politics don't need to be personal, and I was still friends with my same friends I was friends with before I found out if my friends were Republican or Democrat. We are all grown-ups.

[It helps that I moved away lol. If I thought the 2004 election was bad, I cannot even imagine living through the 2008 or 2012 ones. To my American readers, I salute your perseverance! As much as the internet has matured for religious discourse, it has devolved when it comes to politics. My facebook feed is evidence enough of this. As a way of contrast, the development of my Rhetoric Management toward religion was to broaden my horizon; for politics it has been to narrow my focus/position. And I think it's interesting that these two areas required such opposite solutions.]

Area the third: Scientific Literacy. Given my BSc. I suppose my critical thinking skills developed earliest here, but didn't really... settle, until I was learning to navigate the morass of medical science and effective vs. ineffective healthcare. And I did this while entering a young, controversial, not-yet-completely-scientifically supported profession (don't kill me, Chiropractor friends, for that edgily wishy washy description.) Because I have the background for this, it maybe wasn't so thorny as the religious and political arenas. But it is life and death stuff being discussed at times, and certainly the ethics of healthcare in our (so privileged, so first world) society gets increasingly muddy. In general, I am saddened by the general public's scientific illiteracy. Research is presented so journalistically as to be virtually useless, especially on the internet. And I'm not sure any amount of interwebz maturation is going to compensate for the lack of quality science education being provided our children. If I'm going to be a Tiger Mom in any fashion, it will be drilling the scientific method into my poor children's heads and hearts until they weep for the sheer joy of deductive reasoning (lol... kind of.)

Ah yes, won't someone think about the children? Well, parenting is the most recent and, frankly, batshit crazy arena of rhetoric and flat out propaganda I've been thrown into navigating. Just when I think I'm getting a handle on it, I'm thrown into a fit of self-recrimination or sputtering indignation once again (from "I'm a horrible mother!" to "JFC shut your judgmental pie-hole!" and back again. Repeat.) If I hadn't honed my chops or whatever leading up to this, I would go crazy. Because when it comes to our children, everyone's opinion is the only way and everyone else is ruining their children's lives and there is just. no. end. If a mother isn't willing to just turn it off, walk away, and trust in her heart that she is doing the loving, most bestest job she can with the resources she has, she will be destroyed. I like to dabble and read and engage with both sides of any debate, and I find it all pretty entertaining. I'm not always the best at articulating why I make the choices I make (homebirth, for e.g.) and my lack of articulation can feel pretty weak in the face of so much interneticulation (can I make up that word? I think I just did. But do you know what I mean? The voice of the articulate internet - anybody can sound totally reasonable or totally unreasonable to anybody else on the internet.) But every day is an exercise in filtering parenting rhetoric, and I wouldn't say that exercise is best performed by the sleep-deprived haha.

[Speaking of internet maturation, I think since Bean was born (when I started writing this) the way parenting is treated on facebook and twitter, and even blogging to an extent, has really changed - I think people are starting to get the message that kindness matters. The trolls have been ignored out of existence, maybe a little? At least, I get the sense parents are less willing to rise to the Polarizing Bait - there's more focus on being supportive? Maybe this is also in my imagination...]

[I'm sorry this ended up so disjointed. I just know that my emotional health depends on my rhetoric metre - I sense the rhetoric, I sense how it could elate or enrage me, I evaluate if I feel like or have the resources for elation/enragement, I proceed accordingly. This is just my story of traveling the steps of Rhetoric Management. Critical thinking keeps me sane, in a crazy world. I hope it does the same for you.]

Mama Bean knows you on a certain level, you know?

When I was in university, I concocted a system of interpersonal knowledge levels by which I evaluated and/or grew friendships/relationships. Despite the world of adult relationships being vastly more complicated than how complicated I thought my social life was in my early 20s, I still find the system useful, at least for analyzing my placement in a particular friendship or wider group/web of relationships.

The system has three levels. Primary knowledge is the basic nuts and bolts info about someone's life - their family, their occupation, what they do on a day to day basis. Obviously, knowledge at this level can be pretty superficial (dog's name, what car they drive) and can get very deep (particularly detailed knowledge of someone's history, for example, or in this day and age, a solid understanding of their religious or political views, perhaps.) And every relationship starts here, with the basic exchange of information. Secondary knowledge has to do with preferences - again from a superficial level (favourite restaurant, hobbies, taste in music) to the more detailed (I don't know how to describe it, but just a very solid idea of their world view, to the point of predicting what they'd like in novel circumstances, maybe?) And this level also encompasses understanding a bit about value systems, but not so much as the third and final level. Tertiary knowledge is when you know someone well enough to know their motivations and drivers, their values, an understanding of their personality. This gets more into having predictive abilities as far as their choices or behaviours go - you know what they'll do or what they're thinking/feeling. It's more than just knowing opinions. For me, being a Myers-Briggs junkie, I need tertiary knowledge to feel comfortable guessing at your four letters. (By the by, the very fact that I have this system fits perfectly with my INFJ personality type, and I thought that was hilarious when I found out.)

So I've been thinking about this as applied to groups, as Papa Bean and I have been examining ourselves during this church search, and also a little bit as it pertains to parenting (and cloud parenting). I think a group that comes together on the basis of some primary level commonality is what I'd call a community. Any given church congregation is a community of people joined at this primary level of common religion. Your workplace is a community of people with a primary level common business/service. Mom groups of many shapes exist on the very basic primary commonality of motherhood. And depending on the specificity of the primary information, the community can be loose or tight, you know? 

I think when we start to look at people joined by a secondary level of commonality, we're talking about a tribe (in the meme-y meta way that we now use that word.) When PB and I consider the church we want to serve in, we're thinking about finding a tribe - not only joined by common religion, but a common specific expression of preferences within that religion, a particular progressiveness and politic. I don't think I have to say that this is a difficult thing to find! I think if you look at really cohesive workplaces or fantastically successful businesses (Apple?) you'll find more of a tribe mentality - people have bought in, have invested in a common goal/vision/process/preference. And I think I've written before about how comforting the Interwebz can be for finding your parenting tribe, somewhere in the Cloud - something that can be near impossible on the ground. 

I suppose a really tight tribe would start to approach a tertiary level of knowledge and connectedness, which I would call synergy. But I'd say it's pretty hard to get cohesive understanding of motivations and values across very large groups of people (churches have split over much smaller issues than that, amiright?) I'd say it's even pretty rare in two person relationships - I mean, I'd hope most marriages start here and grow into it from there. I can count on one hand the number of people I feel I know (or used to know) on the tertiary level and who know me the same. (Well, and being an introvert, I wouldn't want that number to be much bigger, but tell me extroverts if you have the same experience?)

The complexity of adulthood muddies my system on many many levels. For one thing: geography! When I was in university, everyone most important to me (give or take) lived in my city; not so anymore. I have these synergistic friends living their primary lives miles away from me, and I am ashamed to admit how little time I invest in maintaining that primary knowledge - what do they do day to day? What car do they drive? Let alone their parenting strategies, their workplace conflicts, their political activity... I know I can't hold onto my tertiary or deep secondary laurels with these friends forever, without supportive knowledge of their actual physical life. Because everything changes, and that's the other thing: time! I mean, values and personality are relatively stable over time, but still - people are falling in love, making new humans, building empires or destroying them!

More than anything, having indulged in some profound nostalgia of late (five year college reunions will do that) I find myself wishing (oh so dangerously tinged with regret is wishing) that I'd known then, when I was spending my valuable hours thinking myself so clever for figuring out the world in three simple levels, when I was discovering who my secondary and tertiary levels really were at Palmer, when I was growing and developing that selfhood in early marriage and now in early parenthood... I wish I'd known what and who really mattered. And I wish I'd taken the time - I wish I would take the time now to tell those people, to say what I feel, to hash it out with them, "Hey, here's where we're community and I like that, let's keep that" or, "Hey, here's where we're tribal, it's awesome, and I like it, let's keep it" or, "Hey, I think you know that we have something beautiful and synergistic between us, and I treasure that, please... please, keep that with me." I mean, I don't think every relationship can necessarily handle that exact depth of conversation, but in this age of ridiculous digital-connectedness, you'd think I could find the time to at least be honest.

So, tell me things: do you organize your sense of friendship in a system like this? Does your personality jive or clash with this system? (It's not perfect, so I'm not going to be insulted if you've got other ideas.) How do you navigate the communities and tribes in your life? How do you cultivate or communicate your way through tribalism or synergy? Think about it while we enjoy the sweet dulcet tones of Mr. John Mayer.

Mama Bean sometimes can't win

Vignette the first:

Chatting with a patient during treatment, exchanging basic information about our children, boy/girl mix, ages and how many months apart they are. I love having these conversations, I love that I get to meet so many moms at varying stages of motherhood, I feel I am participating in community and shared wisdom and wonderful womanhood, or something. Then I ask if she is home full-time with her children (because I ask everyone about their primary occupation, because it's interesting, and because their occupational activities have a bearing on their spinal health.)

She replies, "Yes, I just couldn't fathom letting someone else raise my children, y'know?" And then, perhaps realizing that I have children and I clearly am letting someone else raise my children, she feels it necessary to ask, "So where do your kids go when you're here?" I don't know, maybe she was hoping, against hope, that (as in the first eight months of each of their lives) my husband was at home raising our children? And I was not the awful mother she had just insinuated me to be? Oh well. 'Tis not so. End scene.

Vignette the second:

Chatting with an older mom about feeling somewhat limited and/or isolated with my small children; describing that I don't always feel able to handle long outings, or poorly timed (vis a vis eating or napping) activities, or that I simply do not seem to have enough hands/patience/wits to parent some days. Explaining that I opt out (willingly, because it's what's best for my kids) but that I fear I'm missing out (on my community, on friendship, on having a life). Expecting (why do I expect things?) some commiseration, maybe, or some encouragement. I would have accepted even platitudes; this-too-shall-pass me, you'll-miss-it-one-day me - I don't even care! Instead, I got, "Yeah, I used to use my kids as an excuse, too, but then I realized I just had to do it. And it wasn't so bad." I don't know, maybe she thought that was encouraging? It wasn't. Call me crazy. End scene.

Vignette the third:

In the midst of a group of harried moments ganging up on me, a progressing-into-cranky-and-irrational Moment, a toddler-and-pre-toddler-with-no-impulse-control Moment, I struggle to gather my belongings, assess any damage that's been caused, and prevent any potential damage from occurring by the barely-wrangled beasts. I struggle to maintain a socially-acceptable exterior, to be polite, to not yell, to not grab and wrestle and throw over my shoulder, kicking and screaming. I struggle with the fact that I love my children, and I accept them in all their moments, harried or not, but even so, the world does not. In fact, the world, at that moment, in the person of someone I thought of as a friend, instead said to me, "Wow, I just cannot relate to that, getting more and more riled up as they get tired. I guess my kids just weren't like that."

End. fucking. scene.

Mama Bean is a Narrative and a Statistic

You know what's great about the internet? No matter what your Weirdness, someone else has it, too. And they've got a blog or a tumblr or a pinboard, and inter-kismet will bring y'all together. It's the way of the (brave new) world. The internet makes bell curves come alive - your weirdness is just the centre of some weird bell curve, populated by a bunch of other weird people who are all, on average weird like you. Bell. Community. Interwebz are Love.

As a new mom, a young mom, and inexperiencedandbaffledandtired mom, finding my Self on another's blog, seeing myself in a meme, hearing my voice in someone else's post, holy shit was that a relief. Like whoooooosh   ...   relief. And then? I get to interact and comment and like things? I get to have a voice, too? And you're gonna agree with me? And affirm me? Wha? Ohshityes, sign. me. up.

But it doesn't stay that way. Or rather, this brave new world, this virtual group parenting, this Cloud Parenting, it's a double edged sword. Because, even when we share weirdness, we remain individuals. And in one way or another, there will be clashes, differences, confrontations. And there will be Trolls.

I was chatting with a friend about how frustrating it is when someone extrapolates their parenting experience out to the Whole. I'm not talking about the Well-meaners offering (unsolicited or not) advice. I mean the people who seem to misapprehend that the way they are living Parenthood is not the way everyone lives Parenthood. That, in fact, every child is different, and every mother, too, and every family and community beyond that, too also.

It starts to feel like you're being judged, because your experience doesn't look like theirs, and for whatever reason (familiarity?) they'd prefer if you looked like them. The scientist in me wants to scream at them (a little, just a little), "You have a sample size of ONE! That is not actual evidence. Anecdotes are not CONCLUSIVE!"

This is the paradox of Cloud Parenting. On the one hand, this blessing, this relief of finding your Tribe, where you feel your choices and preferences and experiences are accepted, where you belong. On the other hand, this struggle to assert your individuality, and its worth, to hold up your Story over and against the bell curve. It's a tension, and this generation of parents has to learn to navigate it in ways the grandparents did not.

I'm just saying, when I feel like myself or my kids are being outliers in some worrisome way, I am grateful for the opportunity to find some corner of the internet that affirms we are just plain normal. Or at least, we are statistically Within Range of normal. But, the power of the Cloud doesn't negate or lessen or cheapen our Shine - we are still sparkling shining snowflakes of specialness. And so there, I am grateful for the opportunity to just smoodge all over myself about our Sparkle in my corner of the internet. But I shouldn't fear that anyone's particular story sets a statistical standard for me to live up to.

I don't feel like I'm getting this out very well. I just wanted to say that there's a tension between the opportunities provided by the Internet to a) express one's (parenting, religious, whatever) Narrative as unique and special and b) find one's (parenting, religious, whatever) Group as inclusive and homogeneous at the same time. It's a tension that didn't exist for previous generations. That's all I'm saying.