The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

My truth took off its sweater.

The thing is, I am temporarily crippled by the weight of criticism on a semi-regular basis. I obsess over it, ruminate in the bathtub, snarl about it while I scrub the floors or my too dry skin. Someone is always under it, the skin I mean. There is always a voice coursing around beneath it, like an unknown creature beneath the bed covers. It is my scourge.

Today, while chatting with A., we got on to the topic of badly behaved children. Her two boys are eighteen now, well beyond the idiot/exuberant toddler phase, but I remember well how rambunctious they used to be and how permissive A. was whenever I saw her with them. Not my business, I used to think, so I tolerated the temporary insanity, even babysitting them when their grandfather died and A. had to deal with the subsequent family commitments. P., the twin with the Asperger's syndrome, was out of sorts at the time, and I remember having to try to calm him in the middle of a busy video store because I refused to rent whichever film he'd set his sights on. Not an incredibly patient person, I eventually disciplined him the way I would have disciplined any child, and incredibly he responded to it, calming down and reverting back to the version of himself I was most familiar with. I decided then that this was what he needed, to be treated normally instead of the way so many people treated him, as though he were defective. Anyway, I made mention of how my bro-in-law's nephew has Asperger's too (an epidemic, apparently, and I'm one of those who believes it's a result of adverse reactions to vaccines and perhaps even related to food allergies), and how the kid was more unruly than usual, behaved differently than any other time I've been around him and that he seemed to need more structure than what his parents appeared to be giving him. I must have hit some kind of nerve with her because her 'evil' persona came out with both fists swinging, and she started to make passive aggressive remarks about how it is 'ridiculous' to discipline children in the way that so many people do (i.e-myself), that you need to talk to your kids, to allow yourself to understand that they're going to act out, and so on. I took it with a grain of salt and laughed off her obvious attempts to bait me, but when I made mention of how my nephew had locked my sister in the garage after my sister refused to return a toy to him because he'd refused to share with my wee one, she got downright vicious.

'That's just ridiculous. I can't believe she'd do that. He's just a kid, for godsake. You do NOT take a toy away from him just because of that, I mean, come on!'

'Okay, then,' I laughed good-naturedly, 'what would have been the better solution, then?'

'It teaches children nothing to threaten them like that,' she hissed. 'What you do is buy them two toys so that there is no problem with sharing.'

I know my face must have contorted when she said this, but I could tell she really meant it, and that this wasn't just about toys. She's always hated my sister.

'Yeah,' I started slowly. 'Actually, that sounds just out and out stupid to me. I mean, completely and utterly stupid.'

'What?!', she snapped.

'You're telling me that instead of teaching a child the fundamentals of sharing and human kindness that we should cater to base selfishness, even foster it so that they grow up thinking that they'll never have to learn how to compromise? Now, that's ridiculous. No other way to look at it.'

It went of from there, with her telling me that all 'only' children grow up with an exaggerated sense of entitlement (translation: my daughter is going to be a selfish brat), that they always end up thinking that things need to be done their way (translation: my daughter is probably going to be annoying and bossy), and that children with strict disciplinarian parents cannot cope when they become adults, unable to make even the most basic of decisions (translation: the way I am always watching my child and ensuring that she follows the few simple house rules we have means that one day she'll be spinning in circles,unable to figure out which direction she should go). Why she felt like she had to start this particular leg of the conversation, I don't know. I have never criticized her parenting skills, though I did go ominously quiet when she told me that she recently bought pot for her sons because "it's better for them than drinking alcohol is, because you know, alcohol is a depressant and P. reacts badly to alcohol, and they're going to do it anyway so at least I make sure they smoke organic". If I remember correctly, I snorted at her self-righteousness that day. Who buys pot for their kid in the first place, much less one with an intellectual issue? I didn't know people were actually this stupid, and now one of my so-called 'intelligent' friends has come forward to admit that yes, she too is a bit of an idiot. She read my mind and immediately went on to tell me that all kids try drugs and I might as well get ready for it.

No, actually, not all kids do. I didn't. I have never had interest and none of my friends did it either. Not to mention that my friend C. works in a psychiatric ward and tells me what drugs do to people, even first-timers, and that yes, marijuana affects people to, especially people with a predisposition toward bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. If it's got a chemical in it, it's going to affect the chemicals in your body, and that's just how it works. I'd rather have a glass of wine and call it a day.

'So what if she decides to try it?' A. asked, trying to corner me.

It will not be tolerated in our home, and this will be made abundantly clear. We will talk about it, and I will listen to her, but at the end of the day, I will not condone or foster unproductive or useless habits. What she chooses to do when she is an adult is a different story, and I will love her, but the sole purpose of recreational drugs is to escape, and my goal is to create an environment in which escape will happen through other kinds of stimulation. I will support any and all interests of her which actually have a purpose and might allow for something worthwhile.

'She's going to hate you!', she said, sounding delighted.

It's my job to be her parent. It's my job to teach her how to be the best version of herself. It's not my job to be her buddy or her pusher. I am here to love her, guide her and give the benefit of my experience. Adolescence is going to be tough, no matter what, but I have no regrets about mine and I hope that she will trust me enough to confide in me if she needs to in the future. She'll make mistakes, and so will I, but I am not going to willingly make them.

Luckily, we cut the conversation off around that time and I tried to forget everything about it. She likes to cause trouble sometimes, it's just her way. She even admits to the needling on occasion, makes self-deprecating remarks about how she can be such an 'idiot', but why she does it is not always clear. Still, I found myself mulling over the comments hours later, worrying about whether or not I am too strict with my girl, if I am perhaps setting myself up for a future with a daughter who will rebel and experiment as a way of retaliating against a domineering mother. Is it possible I'm grooming her for a life like mine, a life in which I can barely function unless I know someone will be there to catch me if I fall? I don't want that for my girl. I don't want her to live an anxious, lonely life. I don't want fear to be a major theme.

Later on, my sister P. called and I relayed the main points of the conversation to her. I know that she thinks my wee one is 'too old' for her age, that she is like a 'little old lady' with her contemplative nature and the way she tends to admonish kids who misbehave. While I find it endearing, I could tell that my sister finds it to be reminiscent of my grandmother, and this is not a compliment. She fumbled around, looking for the right words before clumsily stating that kids don't like the kinds of kids who tell others what to do and that it's hard for them to fit in (this stemming from an incident on the weekend in which my child admonished her child for throwing his toy at her while she was trying to put on a puppet show for the rest of us. He burst into tears and fled the room). Immediately I wished that neither of them had called me today as I felt all the unspoken criticisms wash over me. I projected to ten years from now and felt the panic rise in my chest. What if my girl gets involved with the wrong crowd? What if she becomes an introvert who is paralyzed with fear at the mere prospect of socializing? What if she hates me? What if, what if, what if....

So now, after hours of fretting about whether or not it's okay that my daughter is the kind of kid who prefers quiet to rowdiness, books to destruction, and interactive conversation to random and directionless screaming, I realized that I not only love her, but I like her style. I adore her self-assuredness and the way she doesn't understand the motivations behind some other children's frenetic mannerisms. No, she's not perfect, but I don't put her up on a pedestal. I appreciate the way she thinks, that she still feels guilty for devouring the outside of M.'s birthday cake last year or that she couldn't understand why my sister K. was speaking on her cell phone while she was driving down a busy street (Auntie Kerry? Are you supposed to be on the phone while driving? Isn't that against the rules?) While my sister looked annoyed by the question, I laughed and told the wee one that she was absolutely right, which only made my sister purse her lips tighter. My child is beautiful to me not because she shares my blood and genetic history, but because she is genuine and kind, and she has no problem with sharing even though I only buy her one of any toy. She is smart, and she is interesting and while we may not always like one another in the years to come, the love will never be compromised.

I'll admit to sometimes finding fault with other people's children, and I know I'm going to be blind on occasion to the flaws in my own child's character, but after today I am even more committed to keeping the rules as they are in this house, and I am also more certain that the way I'm raising my child is more in keeping with my values than any of the practices employed by my family or friends at the moment. My child has been a dream up to this point, and it's not all a matter of how M. and I have raised her thus far. Most of it is just because of who she is. I won't change the way I handle myself with her because I know kids thrive on structure, that despite their quest for independence and their occasional bouts of willfulness, they always need a slightly firm hand to hold them up. They're smarter than we give them credit for. I don't know why so many of us forget what it was like. Don't we all have at least one childhood hero/heroine who we respected and adored because they commanded our respect and also returned it?

I remember being a serious kid who just wanted to do things in the way I thought they should done. I also remember how my sisters were less serious than I was, and how frustratingI found that. I was bossy and self-righteous and they rarely listened to anything I said, but it has stopped mattering to me. I have problems, they have problems and no one is better than anyone else. No one really knows which way the children will go. All anyone can do is guide, love and keep their fingers crossed.

You teach respect, you get respect. This is not difficult. What I need to do is stop worrying about what all the other judgmental mothers are thinking of me. I am not one of them, the minivan herd, and I'm beyond comfortable with this. I will not buy pot for my kid if she asks me, and I won't think it's adorable if she runs around like a mental patient screaming at the top of her lungs. I need to stop caring if they're talking about me, and I need to stop taking the bait.

They don't know any more than I do, truth be told.