I guess my original sin is that I don't get children. I don't grok children. I am not sure I ever was a child myself. As far back as my memory goes, I was always trying desperately not to be a child: to catch up with my sisters (five and seven years older than I, respectively), to make my mother laugh that deep chesty chuckle she had, as they could do so easily; to articulate perfectly, to use flawless grammar, to speak several languages, with perfect accent, at least well enough to impress the casual listener; to be tall and strong and athletic; and always to keep my brain and body under perfect control. That's all I know about being a child.
Well, that and getting beaten up by one sister, and being the subject of withering sarcasm (and also being beaten up) by the other. All I had to do was be born: the beating and the diminishing and the perplexing rages ensued and continued, year after year, until one day I was about five feet, seven inches tall, weighing in at a muscular 130 or so, and it stopped. After that, it was pure psychological abuse, year after year, until one day, after I'd read one more book, and listened carefully through one more session, studied closely the practice of verbal violence, that I opened my mouth and hurled it back. In spades, in trippingly light and devastating phrases, accompanied by an unwavering and challenging stare. Come and get me, assholes; try it now. Then it stopped, and they both, each in her own way, retreated into kissing my ass, and going underground to subvert my every discernible wish. To thwart that last assault, I kept my wishes and dreams to myself, so well that eventually I lost track of what they were. I had detached from my tormentors, and, sadly, detached from myself as well. They almost won the war, but eventually I found myself again, and just in time.
So being a child is not a good thing, one. Two, while you're a child, keep your head down, avoid others who wish you harm, retreat to a hideout, read a book. Three, learn fast to control yourself, don't whine, don't cry, don't attempt to compete until you've reached good size and supple mind. Four, if you have to be a child, get over it as fast as you can.
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I do know that children are not contemptible; I figured that out once I was no longer small myself. When I became a mother, I found that they're just mysterious, and frequently out of control; they bear watching, and if they fall under one's care, the watching and listening and teaching must never -- never -- relent. They hurt themselves, they get sick, they do great harm to each other (don't I know that!), they fly into rages, they retreat into peculiar and painful depressions. They must be fed nutritious and ample food; they must be bathed and then clothed impeccably and fashionably; they must be vaccinated, and medically checked regularly, and stitched up with alarming frequency; they must be taught good manners, respectful demeanor, please and thank you, the latter in longhand if possible; they must be educated, broadly and unceasingly, in art, literature, music, history, sociology, math and science (God help me); schooled in the beauty and folly of religion, the peace of spiritual practice. I wonder if anybody in the history of the world has ever done all of this well and at the same time given to the little bastards the unconditional love they crave more than anything else. And lived to tell the tale.
Children cannot be forced (my mother so wisely stated) to eat, drink, shit, or study. (Note: They cannot be taught to love the parent. To be loved and admired by one's offspring is not in anybody's contract; to expect it is absurd and doomed to failure. Only my mother could pull it off, and she was only loved and admired by me. My sisters were, again respectively, too intimidated and overshadowed by her to offer their love. My mother's reward for doing all of the above better than anybody else I've ever known, was the easy mutual admiration and friendship she shared with me the last few years of her life.)
In raising my children, I gave up on physical persuasion about a third of the way through -- it just didn't work, it made them resentful and even more obstinate, and it made me feel like a bully. Where I could, I used rational argument; sometimes that worked, but when the real issue (not the putative I-don't-want-to-do-my-homework, but the real who-the-hell-is-in-charge-here issue) raised its ugly head, sometimes I let go of the reins, and resorted to letting empirical data teach them. Go ahead and do the dumb thing you want to do, and observe, if you will, the natural consequences of said dumb action. My kids are smart, no question, and sometimes the let-it-play-out approach worked. Sometimes it didn't, sometimes it took an outside force to make the point: a teacher giving a failing grade, a vice-principal threatening expulsion, even a couple of times a cop collaring and scaring the bejesus out of the kid. And the mother.
I do know I did the best I could, day and night, beginning to end; exhaustion and frustration, and eventually my own dangerous depressions, are what kept my best from being enough.
And after decades of reflection, and parsing of evidence, and studying other parenting techniques, I still do not understand children. Hell, I'm only now beginning to understand myself, and that in itself is the work of several lifetimes.
