PlayIsTheWork.com

Obviously, every kid looks at the end of the school year with different eyes than in Fall. But life threw us some extra big challenges this year. Moving to a new state would have been enough. Having Dad gone most of the Winter was…interesting. I’m struck by how deep the work of being a kid has gone for my two girls this year. They had to sink or swim, and they are really getting to be strong swimmers.

My five-year-old is by nature not a lover of change. Like most young kids, she likes routine and structure, and she’s a bit shy. Her first few weeks at her school were heartbreaking for me, saying goodbye and knowing that by the end of the day she’d be worn out from trying to keep it together. Now, when I work in her classroom it’s clear how much she loves her classmates and they her, how much she’s learned both academically and experientially. She’s exploded, in every way. She’s both more mature and yet also more able to enjoy life. She’s learned to, as one educator put it “trust the environment”, and as a result, herself. I could tell a similar story about her older sister, who entered a school where most of the kids had known each other for the previous five grades.

As a witness to this year, I’m in awe of all the kids’ willingness to stay at the task of growing up, their joy at every milestone, and their anxiety about each step away from babyhood into kid-dom, closer to adulthood. I hope that the fact that this year has been hard will be a blessing. Because as a mom I found it hard to blithely throw my kids into challenge or hardship. It felt wrong. But it can be a great teacher, as I’m beginning to understand.

I think this more experiential aspect of parenting sometimes gets lost in the sweet, material side of family life. We have lots of images of what our beautiful family life is supposed to look like, hair mussed on the beach, smiling for a pretty portrait. But do we have a lot of information about how to shape these young lives into whole, capable beings? Where do we learn about character growth? So much of the subject is laden with moral imperatives, and for me, discomfort with other peoples’ agendas. It’s easier to focus on simply meeting their needs, especially when they’re little.

When they get older, their need for challenge and postponement of gratification runs against that parental imperative to keep our precious babies happy at all cost. It seems so retrograde to acknowledge that being content now might shortchange them later, or at least that the times when we fail to keep their world utterly safe and predictable might actually do them good.

Luckily, kids these days do have challenges before them. And I think there’s a lot to look forward to from those who cope with overscheduled, performance-oriented days, often in the absence of parental supervision. I know that when my brothers and I were kids, our parents brooked no complaints about our very real hardships. We were expected to rise to the occasion.

And I think I’m seeing now in my girls, sometimes rising to the occasion gives them a sense of confidence and mastery that belongs authentically to them. I’m realizing that the risk, the unknown, the un-coddled, must be there. It gives them something to prove themselves against, water to swim in.

Not a giant fan of Sandra Day O’Conner. But the stories of how her character was formed by riding out with the cattle alone at the age of eleven are valuable. If they can survive it, learning to contribute seems to outweigh “just being a kid” as a long-term strategy. New studies appear to prove that the biggest indicator of future success in children is doing chores. Not lessons, activities, sports, or high tech skill. Chores.

That means taking part in purposeful activity that contributes to all of life, not just the fun or entertaining parts. Character arises from sacrifice on behalf of others, adjusting to the needs of the whole, and being expected to face adversity with grace. It strikes me that in modern life we can work that kind of outer-focus in to almost any day. In fact, it lends itself well to a world where people work hard. It’s more work for parents, of course, because teaching a kid how to do something useful is harder than simply doing it ourselves. But such teaching turns out to be essential. As a self-help instructor once put it, it takes “holding them as able”.

So, maybe there is no contradiction between expecting children to face adversity and being good parents. What a relief, at least to me, who was unable to give them a childhood free of loss, hardship, or scary new schools. I thought I might be harming them, but clearly they have gained enormously from the experience.

So, rise to the occasion, darlings. I guess now’s the time to tell you that life will be full of them.

Posted on May 5th, 2006 by MomStar
Filed under: Uncategorized