Parenting As The Parented

Parenting is unique in that it is something we all experience before we set out to do it ourselves. It's impossible to go into it with a blank slate: maybe we had a bad experience and vow to do it differently. Maybe we had great ones and try to do it all the same. Or more often, it's a mix of the two. And really, our concept of how well or poorly we were parented is a nuanced, changing thing, changing as we ourselves change. Changing as we ourselves parent.

You only have to look as far as siblings to see this. While we had the same general experience growing up, something my parents did that affected my sister deeply may be something I barely remember. Every time I hang out with Dave’s sister, I’m similarly impressed by how the same things their parents did imprinted in differing ways or extents in her life compared with Dave’s.

Our own valuation of how we were parented is hardly linear. We start off not knowing anything different; then most of start to evaluate our parents in our teens to early twenties. We see their fallibility, compare them with our friends’ parents, place their worldviews and values in the context of larger culture or our own evolving beliefs. We try to perceive what has been ingrained; we accept some parts and reject others. This happens more deeply and exhaustively after marriage, as assumptions from our upbringing come to light, and as we decide together what to incorporate into our own parenting. Then we become parents ourselves, maybe seeing how difficult all that theory can be to put into practice.

Probably the most important thing I’ve learned is that it’s not all black-and-white. When I was younger, I thought my parents could do no wrong, and his parents rarely did it right. I see now that there are some values my parents prioritized that I may not push as exclusively for my kids, and that his parents have strengths and legacies that will bless our family for generations. Wrapped up in that is realizing that I can’t see anything clearly until I choose to forgive and let go of any accumulated bitterness. Anger towards my parents or in-laws cripples my ability to parent my own children in a healthy way. It only passes toxic baggage down to another generation, and prevents me from receiving whatever blessing they may have to offer despite the brokenness. And part of seeing the nuances is realizing I can’t judge them, that I almost certainly don’t understand their circumstances, or even what they carried from their own parents.

How has my parents’ parenting influenced how I parent my kids? Pretty enormously, I guess. First and foremost, they took parenting seriously. They never put ministry or career above their kids. They approached it with a sort of intellectual earnestness, a commitment to quality, despite not having the best examples themselves or having similarly-minded parents in their immediate community. They read books, discussed issues. I remember lots of ideas, some that panned out better than others, but there was always something they were trying: a date-night reward system, playing character-focused games, structuring annual vacations. I never question the value of the time I spend with the kids, which comes in large part from them.

Secondly, they passed along a lot principles we try to keep: the best gift you can give your children is a healthy marriage. If something bothers you about your child, look at yourself first. Always stay one step ahead of your kids. Never fight in front of your kids (arguably healthy fighting can be okay). Always stay united in front of your kids. Never criticize your child in public. Never negatively compare your child with their siblings. Read often to your kids. Supplement their education at home. Never criticize your child’s teacher in the child’s presence. I could go on.

Besides the aphorisms, they did practical things we try to follow: dinner was always a time we sat around the table together, without distraction. I remember similar tea-times we’d have. We had family devotions (not that I was always into them), and I remember going on dates (eating out then was a big deal). My dad was there to pick me up after school activities every day (I now appreciate the work flexibility that involved). He tutored me on physics and math often until midnight. My mom never missed a piano recital or competition. Most of all, I had an absolute sense of unconditional love: I never questioned that I was worthy of love, or needed to find it elsewhere.

But I’ve also come to see some things I’d do differently. My parents didn’t focus as outwardly on community; they were wary of bad influences, or friends taking up too much of our energy. I hope we can emphasize community to our kids, even at the cost of our comfort. I hope our home is a place all their friends will want to gather. We hope to go on missions trips with the kids. My parents didn’t always discipline me to the point of teaching me that my self-centeredness is not okay if it hurts others, even if it’s related to a drive for excellence—I can’t blame them for that; I was pretty strong-willed. But that’s something we’ve made an effort to try to teach our kids early on. We didn’t handle conflict very openly growing up: I hope our kids have the skills for and habit of discussing issues openly. And there are certain things we didn’t do—we didn’t travel a ton, discuss current news or world issues—that are simply reflections of my dad’s personality or our own inclinations, but that I look forward to developing more with our kids, mostly because Dave enjoys those things.

And there are things from my in-laws I hope to pass on to the kids: a love for the arts, a talent for evangelism and networking, how to handle wealth healthily.

I’m sure one day the kids will be processing the same things about us. There are things we’ll do great, and blind spots we’ll have. I hope they’ll have the same grace and discernment about it that I try to have about our parents. And I hope it’ll be something we can walk through together, just like we still are meeting with and learning from my parents today.

Honey For A Child's Heart

“Kids don’t stumble on good books by themselves. They read the titles they’re given.” –Gladys Hunt

I’ve been somewhat convicted that I should be more intentional about what our kids read. Because our kids do read. A lot. We go through upwards of thirty books from the library, as often as once a week. Ellie’s favorite thing to do is sit at the table with a snack and read through books non-stop: it’s a miraculous act of self-parenting. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when all the kids do that!

Ellie’s at the stage where Easy-To-Read books are too boring, but it takes a lot of concentration for her to make it through a regular chapter book; what she likes are chapter books with illustrations. E.B. White, Junie B. Jones (though my sister brought up there are some questionable behaviors in those books), Roald Dahl, and now she’s going through the Magic Treehouse books by Osbourne. Eric, in typical stubborn fashion, refuses to do any reading lessons with me; I’ve no idea how close he is to reading, but he certainly enjoys flipping through books as if he can. Still picture books, especially ones about pirates, dinosaurs, or star wars. Elijah is loving the Martin books illustrated by Eric Carle.

Lately when we go to the library, I haven’t been too active about picking out books for them; I’ll generally direct Ellie to where the books of a few prolific authors reside, and let her pick them out. In the picture book section, we head towards Bill Peet, Stephen Kellogg, Jan and Stan Berenstien, Jan Brett, Mercer Mayer, Max Lucado, London for Froggy books.

But we’ve ran out of new books to try, and I’ve gotten lax about what the kids check out. I’m always trying to talk Eric out of some violent graphic star wars spin-off novel. I’ve also gotten lax about actually sitting down to read to the kids: I was fanatical about doing that with Ellie, but I haven’t been nearly as conscientious with the others.

One BSF home lesson referenced Gladys Hunt’s book Honey for a Child’s Heart, which has a lot of book suggestions. I found a few websites that had lists distilled from that book, or other helpful lists in general:

Exodus Books

Classical Homeschooling resource

Various booklists someone assembled

I came up with a huge list of books and authors for various levels, which I printed out and stashed in the library bag. Tons of new authors and titles, which I’m just as excited to read as they hopefully will be. Read on!

An Ode To Breastfeeding

Today I was looking down at Esme while she nursed to sleep, nestled up against me with her chubby fist next to her mouth. I’m less than one month away from making it out to a year. For the first and last time. Never managed to make it out this far with the others.

I started thinking back on it all. I remember the sinking feeling I had after Ellie was born when I realized I could never leave her or a pump for more than three hours without serious discomfort. No one had told me about that. I remember how painful nursing through mastitis was, and the gymnastics of all the crazy holds so she could vary her latching position to prevent clogged ducts. I remember walking across the hospital to use a hospital-grade pump; eventually even that couldn’t contend with the work hours and stress and I gave it up by around four months.

Eric was memorable: scared of running out of milk, I pumped so much extra milk before going back to work that we couldn’t fit any more in our freezer. Then after I went back at three months, he refused to take the bottle, going on hunger strikes for days. My dad drove him in to the office every three hours and I’d run out to nurse him in the car. Pretty sure he screamed his lungs out the whole way there and back. I think we made it to about six months that way.

Elijah made it to about eight or ten months nursing: around then, he just lost interest. Started biting, and that was the end.

So this is something special Esme and I have going here. She’s just about the most compliant nurser I’ve ever had: always willing to nurse if I ask her to, which makes timing leaving for work much easier. Willing to patiently suck for a long time for a letdown, which helps with production. I’ve also been home most for her, which probably makes a difference.

And watching her, it’s easy to remember all the things I really love about nursing. The secret smiles they give with the nipple still in their mouth. The way their hands wave around like little birds, or reach up to rub my shirt or twirl a strand of my hair. The drunk little happy grins afterwards, the burps. It really is some kind of connection, some kind of miracle. I’ll be happy having more independence, but I think part of me will be sad too when it ends for good.

Arriving

One of the things I have the hardest time not believing is life will better when _______. Some of the things I have subconsciously filled in the blank with in the past include: I get married. I lose weight. I have kids. I have the right number of kids. I find the perfect house. I remodel my house. I get this outfit. I get this bag. I get a full nights’ sleep. I have this kind of sex life. I have these kinds of friends. I earn this much money. I acquire this reputation at work.

Obviously it’s okay to look forward to things, but I can get to a point where I hinge a certain portion of my thought life on arriving at a certain material or circumstantial place that has nothing to do with godliness. And it’s subtle, so subtle it’s nearly subconscious.

It probably has to do with the fact that so much of earlier life is about arriving somewhere: passing a test, getting into a school, passing another test, getting into another school, etc. And it probably relates to the world of constant advertising we indwell, in which it’s easy for a healthy material anticipation to edge into obsession or relative discontent.

It’s the world’s paradigm, that we should always be looking for more, looking for what’s next, to be happier. But the gospel shifts that paradigm completely. It says both that we can be completely content in our current circumstances, and that we ultimately anticipate and work towards eternity, which could come at any point. Nowhere does it say, life will be so much better when you design the perfect house. In fact, from an external perspective, Jesus didn’t “arrive” much of anywhere: he was never married, never had kids. Never got a degree. Probably didn’t own a house or earn much of a salary.

Part of this is reminding myself that my life should reflect what is most important now, and not put off working on things until I arrive at this or that landmark—for example, waiting to work on marriage until we have more time. Part of it is enjoying where I am now, not looking to the grass being always greener in the next stage of life or parenting. I think God created us to anticipate—and we’ll probably always anticipate and hunger to some degree until we get to heaven—but this is a good reminder to me to not base too much on the future.

MGH and Oreos

Dave went to a conference in Baltimore this week where the keynote speaker was a guy from Massachusetts General Hospital. He came home and asked, “Do you miss your days at Man’s Greatest Hospital?” I laughed. I had forgotten we called it that. If there’s any hospital I’d consider my home hospital, it would be that one. I spent most of my third year of medical school there doing my medicine and surgery rotations, living and breathing medicine.

I remember leaning my forehead against the elevator wall on the medicine wards one time when I had finished a thirty-six hour shift. I remember stealing up to the VIP floors during quiet moments late at night on call, to grab the little Styrofoam cups of ice cream they kept there, and eating them in the dark waiting room while looking out at Boston through the glass walls. A nice break from peanut butter and graham crackers. I remember the underground labyrinth of operating rooms; the long lines at the coffee stand in the lobby. I remember looking out the window of the M2 shuttle as it passed Newbury Street on the way back to my dorm, feeling strangely detached from all the fashionably-dressed people shopping in the sunlight, living in my world of fluorescent lights, green scrubs, and Dansko clogs.

Dave informed me it’s the number one hospital in the nation. Great, I think. All that top-notch training, and here I am, sitting at this table cutting letters out for a school science project display, which is pretty much what I’ve been doing with my spare time this week while Dave was off having intellectual congress. Though I have to say—see below—they are pretty awesome letters. Ellie’s project is about Oreo cookies, so the font and colors are copied from the Oreo logo: sketched on white construction paper, cut out, pencil marks carefully erased, then glued on two layers of colored cardstock. I really love doing this stuff. (By the way, Wilmer is the only hospital facility I've worked at that stocks Oreo cookies. I ate so much of them my first year there I never could eat them again. Until this week when we did this project.)

Anyway, it’s all a bit strange to think about. Like one time when I was packing a diaper bag, and suddenly I flashed back to packing my on-call bag in residency. A fishing-tackle box full of drops, eye shields, and tonometer covers; my loops and lenses; a spare pair of vannas scissors and fine forceps. Now, the usual conglomeration of wipes, diapers, socks, snacks. Back then, I had to take a deep breath to not lose it at some idiot wanting to transfer an eye emergency in because they “couldn’t get a look at the eye” due to swelling or irritation. Try harder, I wanted to snap. You have fingers just like me. Now, I have to take a deep breath before giving Eric a time out for lying to my face and refusing to admit it, or dealing with Elijah refusing to sleep because he suddenly remembered his tiny white marble that he had to find before he could go to bed.

Dave also caught up with some old med school friends while he was out there. I’m by far an outlier in how little I’m working compared to my former colleagues. But hey, no regrets. I have faith none of that training was a waste—besides the fact that I’ll likely work more one day, I think it influenced and equipped me in many ways that come through to the kids. And, well, I’m glad I can be around to help Ellie with her project; that means a lot to me. Sometimes it's as simple as that.