Another reason to relax

The new therapy client

The July/August 2011 edition of The Atlantic included a very insightful article on "How To Land Your Child in Therapy". The author, Lori Gottlieb explains how obsessively good parenting can undermine the future happiness and resilience of children.

Not that I am encouraging you to be a BAD parent. But there is, as she explains, a big gap between June Cleaver and Mommy Dearest, and there is room for a lot of variety in between best and worst.

Apparently, a good parent can choose to be more relaxed, and less worried about shielding her child from every possible microdisaster.

Do you think Gottlieb is correct when she says:

". . . underlying all this parental angst is the hopeful belief that if we just make the right choices, that if we just do things a certain way, our kids will turn out to be not just happy adults, but adults that make us happy. This is a misguided notion, because while nurture certainly matters, it doesn’t completely trump nature, and different kinds of nurture work for different kinds of kids. . . "

Is it all right, then to just go ahead and nurture our kids a little less? And to do it our own way? What does that look like for you?

I think that when my kids were little, my friends would have called me an obsessive parent. And maybe I still am one. But now, one of the things I'm obsessing about is the need to let my kids take their own lumps, and make choices which are not perfectly safe. Is that a change for the better? I'm liking the results I see so far- I'll let you know if that changes :)

Back To School Rock

On the day that my daughter started to go to preschool, I wanted to take a nice picture of her.  She decided to go out and stand on an enormous rock in the garden. So I took a picture of her on the rock.  Turns out it's the same rock the neighbours stand on for their back to school pictures.

When the next kid started to school, we had to add a picture of the two of them together on the rock.  It became the annual tradition, an individual shot for each, and a shot of the two of them.

Flash forward to today, and a good laugh as my two enormous children clung to each other to stay perched on a rock which has shrunk significantly in the last 12 years. It makes a fun addition to a great series of photos.

I've heard of people who take a picture month by month and year by year of their child posed in the same chair, or with the same teddy bear, or football, or whatever means something to the family. Series of photos are a great way to keep track of how your child is growing (and, perhaps, how your garden rocks are shrinking :).

Tooth Fairy (or bug) letters

Although it is a big exciting event when the first tooth falls out, and exciting to put the tooth under the pillow and find a shiny coin* in it's place in the morning, that thrill fades somewhat with repetition.

When my first opportunity to act as a fairy came up, I remembered something my Dad did. I had captured a ladybug (a big achievement for a bug-obsessed 4 year old) and he was feeling badly for it. So one night, he let it free, and put a tiny piece (stamp-sized) of paper in the jar, folded up and adressed to me. It explained (in microscopic handwriting) that the bug had heard her babies calling her,  so even though she had enjoyed her visit, she had to leave. It cushioned the pain of loss very nicely, and made me a happier kid. (And him a happier Dad)

So I cut a little square of stationery, and got out my sharpest pencil. I invented a fairy, and let her write a tiny thank-you note, introducing herself and hoping that she and my daughter would be able to become friends.  It went under the pillow with the dollar (I'm Canadian-we use dollar coins every day).

The next morning, we discovered and read the note together, and then I got to watch her "read" it to her baby brother, her Dad, my Dad (who reminded me happily of the ladybug incident) and several others.

I'll return to this topic one day, explaining how it evolved with her, and totally failed with my son.


*Before the first tooth falls, it it important to determine what the local going rate is for tooth fairy payments.  Our neighbour once gave a $5 payment for a tooth and became very unpopular for a little while with the other fairies who did not like the 500% inflation that represented.