It Runs in the Family (10 page)

Will his hands know how to tie knots on the high seas? Pump a heart that has stopped beating? Load, aim, and fire a gun? Will those hands point that gun at a target, or a deer, or an enemy? Will his hands learn how to paint beautiful nature scenes like Grandma Liz? Wield a hammer to build a house or an armoire or a bomb shelter? Will his hands grow vegetables? Prune trees? Harden into fists? Weave tapestries? Click computer keys?

Some of what I can imagine his hands doing makes me happy and misty-eyed; other possibilities terrify me. How do I ensure one outcome and not the other? As a mother, can I write the script of his life?

Can we make him a nonviolent person? His father and I could take a hard line. We could try and control what he is exposed to, shape what he likes, police his interests, and make sure nothing we disapprove of reaches him. Modern dance instead of football? Contact improv not kung fu?
Sesame Street
not
Transformers
? First of all, Patrick and I would have to come to some sort of agreement about all those things, adding a whole other layer to our predicament.

So what can we do, beyond encouraging him to play with blocks and trains instead of
Battletanx: Global Assault
? And what about cowboys and Indians and pirates and policemen? They could all be violent too, right? We’ll shoo him outside to run around in the woods and fields as much as possible. We’ll show him how to love nature and living things. But exploring nature could include pulling the legs off daddy longlegs and throwing rocks at squirrels. I did both of those mean things when I was little.

We will expose him to music, instruments, and melodies, encouraging him to experience beauty every day. But what if the music he ends up loving is loud, endless, bone shaking, and teeth splitting? We’ll feed his imagination with books and stories and make-believe. But what if he heads in a dark direction, dreaming up twisted, strange, magical plots? It made J. K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, and the Brothers Grimm rich and famous. Is it possible to nudge him down safer and brighter paths?

Patrick and I grew up with very similar value systems, and we both got lots of informative responses to our childhood questions. Why don’t we have cool stuff like other kids? Because we don’t have money for brand new toys and games or the latest technology, and even if we did, those toys promote war and violence. Why can’t we watch TV? Because the messages on TV teach viewers to be consumers, to be complacent, to be sexist, racist, and violent. Because we want you to have experiences and interactions instead of just being entertained by someone else’s imagination.

Patrick remembers spending his weekends at the mall—not shopping, but doing street theater, leafleting, and going into the stores to put stickers on the Rambo dolls that said things like: “This toy teaches violence.”

“Every boy I knew had G.I. Joes,” he recalled. “And when I was at kids’ houses, I had to say, ‘I’m not allowed to play with that.’ Sure, I would cheat sometimes and play with them. If I did, I would feel sneaky and sometimes I would go home and tell on myself. It turns out that playing war isn’t all that much fun. In first grade, we were divided into reading groups and every group got to choose its own name. My group was four boys and they all wanted to be the G.I. Joes. I told them I couldn’t be in the G.I. Joes because I am not allowed to play with war toys. We chose some other name; I think we called ourselves The Ghostbusters or the Smurfs.”

When friends and family members gave Patrick contraband presents, they ended up on a high shelf in the office. “Whenever I went in that room, the box of forbidden toys was the first thing I saw. I knew I could reach it. I knew I would get in trouble if I played with it. Sometimes, I would take down the box and look at the war toys, but I never took them out of their packages.”

Patrick secretly played with G.I. Joes; I had the same relationship with Barbie dolls. We both managed to watch a fair amount of the TV at friends’ and relatives’ houses, enough to see that our parents were right—TV shows are sexist and racist and are often nothing more than filler between long blocks of commercials that get inside your head and create needs and wants that weren’t there before. But we couldn’t just take our parents’ word for it; we needed to experience it for ourselves, at least to some extent. Patrick and I were both shaped by our parents’ values and beliefs, able to adopt and apply what made sense and slough off what didn’t. I see this in how we parent our kids.

As I try to imagine (and fight the urge to shape) my kids’ futures, a poem by Khalil Gibran comes to mind:

They come through you but they are not from you, and though they are with you, they belong not to you
.

You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. You can house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in a place of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
.

You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you
.

Seamus is warm and loving and expresses what he needs and wants. He is free of artifice, guile, and hidden agendas. He has no ego or baggage or insecurity. If I can work to be like him, wouldn’t I be a better person? Rather than trying to shape him in my image, why don’t I embrace his boundless wonder, his inexhaustible curiosity, and his hearty appetite for life? I must strive to be like him in some ways and also try to do what my parents did: provide tools, impart wisdom, love and protect the person, and let go of the rest.

I got spanked as a kid. Not often, not hard, not in anger—but I did get whacked on the bottom. I don’t think it happened once a week, but there was a stretch where it probably happened at least once a month. My brother and I fought all the time. We got spanked when we got caught. Spanking didn’t stop us from fighting, but it did help us be more subtle about it.

My dad and mom both spanked us, but Dad got the duty more often. He was always fair. If my brother was going to get a spanking, so was I. He always explained why we were getting the spanking; he never struck us in anger, and he always assured us that “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

One day at school, maybe in the third grade, a mom came into the classroom and spanked her son in front of the whole class. She was yelling while he screamed and ran. She yelled, “Sit still and behave in class!” and “Come back here so I can hit you!” It was very disruptive to our learning and almost comically terrible. Even then, I could compare my spanking to his and know that I had the better deal.

But the irony of getting spanked as a consequence of fighting with my brother dawned on me early. The fact that my brother and I were enjoined to be loving, peaceful, considerate young people and to break the cycle of violence between ourselves or else get spanked—by one of the country’s most prominent Catholic peace activists and pacifists—was kind of funny.

But my father was breaking his own family’s cycle of violence in how he disciplined us. He was born before the Depression, the youngest of six boys with a domineering and mercurial father who made liberal use of the woodshed and the belt and whatever else he had on hand. He hit in anger, in rage, in despondence. Our dad did not.

He talked our ears off first, and if we had heeded even a third of what he said in our all-too-regular “rocking chair conferences,” we wouldn’t have gotten spanked. He used the flat of his hand in an almost ritualistic way. We cried because we knew he was disappointed in us, and also because crying was expected, because crying made it shorter.

There is no spanking in my house now. And also none at my stepdaughter’s mom’s house. This is a good thing, because I have definitely gotten angry enough to want to hit. It makes me appreciate the self-control of my mom and dad, who were able to hit without anger. Not for nothing were they clergy.

Rosena is a marvel: loving, inquisitive, generous, articulate, funny. She has a phenomenal memory, boundless energy, and never misses a beat. She is also scattered, disorganized, willful, opinionated, and almost attorney-like in her drive to get what she wants when she wants it. And I can get frustrated, offended, impatient, exasperated, hurt, and just plain mad.

A dad once wrote to me in response to one of my columns:

I have found parenting a greater test of my commitment to nonviolence than anything in my activist experience. There is something about (a) my apparent need to control my nearly four-year-old son, and (b) his ability to press my buttons in his challenge to my control, that leads to a lot more yelling than I’d like. I am working hard on giving up a little of (a), and sleeping more to reduce the effects of (b)!

Sleep and other aspects of self-care are important components of careful parenting. I handle everything better when I am well-rested and well-caffeinated. Another good idea is trading off. When I feel myself reacting too strongly to our kids, I ask my husband for help. I leave the room. I pass the problem on to him and I take a break. I come back when I am ready to be a grown-up again, when I am cool and collected and ready to dole out consequences that match transgressions—not my level of anger or frustration. That usually means a time-out for her, or a high shelf for one of her stuffed-animal friends.

Talking a problem through with others is also a huge help. But maybe the biggest help I have found is asking
why
? Why is she acting this way right now? Why am I getting hot under the collar? Why do I care if she does or doesn’t do
x
? Is it really important, or is it just about control? Why am I rushing her? Because she is being discourteous and distracted, or to compensate for my own earlier disorganization or poor time management? Does my rushing her help her move faster or slow her down? I found a book at the library,
Your Seven-Year-Old: Life in a Minor Key
, from the Gesell Institute for Child Development. There is a book for every age—4:
Wild and Wonderful
, 5:
Sunny and Serene
. I can’t wait for 8:
Lively and Outgoing
. I was struck by the observation that seven-years-olds need attention and thrive on praise. They are discovering themselves as people capable of action and want to be both recognized for that and reassured that their new discoveries and independence do not mean they are now completely on their own.

If seven-year-olds do not get positive attention for their triumphs, however small and mundane they may seem to grown-ups, they will seek negative attention by acting out. To a seven-year-old, getting snapped at is better than no attention at all. So why is she doing
x
that is annoying and makes me want to scream? Because I failed to appreciate her effort to help a few minutes ago.

Looking back on it now, I think my brother and I fought with each other because living with a bunch of peace-seeking adults was not always fun, because going to school as the peace-activist kids was only occasionally fun, because having our parents go off to jail was not ever fun, because being together all the time was not fun at all, because life in general is stressful, and because fighting provided a release for all of that. It gave us a chance to scream and cry at each other so that we would not scream and cry at a demonstration where our mom was hauled off in handcuffs, or in a courtroom where our dad stood before a judge in a baggy jumpsuit.

As kids, we never had the words to say, “We won’t fight if you stop going to jail and get all these people out of our house.” I am glad for that. They would not have been able to do it, and we would have also missed out on lots of relationships and experiences that I really value. But it is good to understand the
why
.

We had a big birthday bash for Rosena’s sixth birthday. It was great: a gaggle of kids, music, pancakes, a rainbow cake, and lots of balloons. Armed with a how-to guide from the Klutz series and a hand pump, I handed out wonderful balloon hats to the youngsters. They were a hit. But I had not studied my guide very carefully, and once they started clamoring for dog, cat, and dragon balloon animals, I was deeply out of my element.