Closer to Okay
Posted on November 29, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, education, milestones, Anxiety |
Now you can all laugh out loud, clutch your sides and roll on the floor and say very loudly in the confines of your office space, Wasn’t that predictable and I told you so and Obviously. I deserve it. Really, chuckle at my expense, have a good old superior moment and finish it off, really bring it home, with some projected pity because yesterday, after receiving the much anticipated declaration that my son has been selected to part of the top secret enrichment program at his elementary school, O had a Chernobyl-like melt down about the prospect of additional home work and high levels of expectation and the possibility that, while spending thirty minutes a week in enrichment class, he might be missing something totally earth shattering occurring back in the classroom where he spends six hours a day, five days a week. Or, and this occurred to him about twenty minutes into his protracted fit of defiance, after much table pounding and weeping and rolling on the floor, he might miss gym and he loves gym and this is just so unfair and mean, mean, mean and he won’t do it, just won’t. Just try to make him.
I issued the usual bits of wisdom. “This is not a punishment but a privilege. All things in life worth doing require effort. You should be flattered and proud and as pleased as I your father and I are.” A little bit of O must have died each time I issued a simple platitude. It was so parental, so categorically Mom-ish of me. And, of course, my attempts at coercion, fell on deaf ears, rolling right off the obstinate back side of a child laying face down on the family room carpet.
So, as I am want to do, I dug in to some anger - inspired to rage by the possibility that I had birthed a child completely disinclined to give a damn.
How could you be so lazy? So reluctant to accept that you are capable, so unwilling to strive for above average? Rise to the occasion. Grasp opportunity by the horns and excel, God damn it. It was a tirade of army sergeant proportions. With strong undertones of “Be all you can be.”
For all this bluster and blather, all this jangling of frustration, I almost missed the hushed whisper from the muffled mouth of my eight year old as he gnawed at his shirt sleeves and cried great gushes down the front of his pajamas. It was quiet but sudden and floated there between us for a moment. He said, “They made a mistake in picking me, Mom. I’m not good at anything.”
Those two sentences immediately diffused the Mom-bomb that was seconds from exploding.
I want to say I gathered him in my arms and told him he was good enough and smart enough and that no one made even the tiniest mistake thinking him so. But he had slid so far away, had dug so deep into catatonic shut down, that all my efforts to nurture and adore were rebuffed. He lay rigid on the floor as I tried to smother him with parental affection.
So I climbed the stairs, heavy with defeat, and locked myself in the bathroom for a good cry. A rare moment of jagged breaths and puffing eyes. A self indulgent pause in which I let snot run down my face, collecting in a point at the tip of my chin. There in the confines of our dingy 1960’s bathroom with the mildew and the rust ring around the sink, I gave in a little to the fact that my wants and my needs are so different than those of my children. I embraced the fear and the reluctance and the fragile self-esteem of my one and only son and let it go, all this expectation that I had hung on the hope that my kids will be exactly what I had been.
Today I feel a little bit closer to okay with the people that they are.
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10 Responses to “Closer to Okay”
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Oh, sweetie. It’s never easy, is it. That would be too…easy.
He is so very beautiful.
Wow. I hope you feel better today. Thank you for sharing your feelings with us. I am currently homeschooling my son, but I know that won’t last forever and I will probably run into these types of situations in the future. It will help to know I am not the only one!
By the way… Congrats, O!
And you are a very handsome guy!
Sucks, doesn’t it? Been there and done that. As much as we want so very badly–for those we love so very much–we cannot make it happen. We have to suck it up and realize (and oh, how this hurts) that THEY have to want it in order for it to occur.
(I guess this may qualify for one of those challenges that offers potential for personal growth. I don’t know about all that–seems I keep getting the same opportunities, over and over.)
BTW: You son’s a cutie!
WOW, what a challenge as a parent! He is a handsome young man…beautiful eyes.
I hope he can soon realize his potential…I know you are doing all in your power to acknowledge it, but sometimes they overlook their own strengths. I think it’s the age.
Ah.
You put children in a ranking and rating situation and you create three of the least desirable characteristics of humanity - arrogance, humiliation, and anxiety.
It seems to me that the difficult secret to teach our children (and to learn ourselves) is to work to find the proximal zone of development, continuing to find flow by engaging in tasks that are neither overwhelming nor boring. Sometimes that’ll take you ahead of the pack, and sometimes it’ll leave you behind, but none of that matters as much as the engagement.
P.S. I was going to restrain myself from commenting on this soap box issue of mine, but could not resist it for this many days in a row. Sign me, the guy with poor impulse control.
Way to go O and way to go CCE - I feel like this is almost a bigger milestone for you than for him. Thanks for eloquently sharing what we sometimes can’t express or come to terms with.
And by the way - we really miss you guys!!!!
you express yourself so well.
and O is incredibly handsome.
It’s a great challenge of parenthood to love who we’re sent, rather than trying to turn them into someone we love.
But let me lighten things up with a joke and say that he’s just way too cute to be smart!
[…] The post that I will include to represent something that I love is called Closer to Okay, a suggestion that however imperfect my stabs at affection, I really do love my children. […]