I’m not talking about Teddy Bears, or Pokemon here. I’m talking about the skills and the mindsets at the outlooks that she will learn from me.
Some of these will not be deliberate, and those will be a mixed bag. Some will be blessings, others… Well, not so good. Baby Snookums’ father is an arrogant and stubborn bastard.
Baby Snookums herself has proven herself to be aggressively stubborn as well. It’s a two-edged sword at best. Hopefully it means she’s self-confident and able to make up her own mind, and have the courage of her convictions. Hopefully it doesn’t mean that she’s the kind of idiot who will pound her head against a wall all day like her father rather than looking for a door.
Fortunately Mommy’s personality is an excellent compliment to Daddy’s and vice-versa. Get those personality genes mixed just right, and Snookums is likely to be perfect.
We won’t think about the possibility that they could mix exactly wrong.
Anyway, I really don’t have that much control over this kind of thing, and so there’s little point talking about it.
What I am talking about are the deliberate things I can give her.
For example, there is no chance that my daughter wouldn’t love books. From day one, this was a coldly calculated strategy on my part. I’ve forced her to love books the same way I meet teach a dog to “sit,” or a horse to “trot.” I consider this a gift to my daughter, as I think a love of books means you don’t ever have to be lonely or bored. It means that you will have a rich inner life, and not only a questing mind, but a mind capable of achieving it’s quests and dreams. So we read every day, and at 22 months my duaghter recognizes a couple of dozen words, and can even write her own initials. She plays with her books by herself and seems to make up stories and pretend to be reading them.
I’m proud to have engendered this gift into her.
That one was an easy one. Some of the other gifts, or, to put a better word on it “indoctrinations” I wish to instill upon my daughter make me slightly uneasy, and I’m not sure how to proceed.
For example, I think the worst thing a parent can say to a child is “I just want you to be happy,” or “You can be anything you want to be.”
The former statement to me is a trap. It seems to me that happiness is one of those things that the more time you spend seeking it, the less likely you are to find it. If you don’t worry about it, it seems to find you just fine. I have an acquaintance who spends all his time trying to make himself happy. He drives a Boxster, goes on all these vacations, buy himself all these toys. He has a great family that he treats poorly, a great job that he finds unrewarding, and good friends that he’s always trying to upgrade. He has all the ingredients and then some, but he ain’t happy and he spends all his time trying to get there.
I on the other hand am happy jogging, splitting wood, reading, writing, at work (most of the time,) or saying “socks” over and over for hours on end with my daughter who seems to get a big kick out of the word. I think that happiness is an interior state and independent of circumstances. Striving is in itself a good thing and creates it. Striving for something better than what you have assures you will never attain it. So, telling your kid that happiness is something you want for them is only going to make it that much harder for them to get.
Besides, too many people equate happiness with fun, and both are overrated IMO.
As for the latter statement, let’s face it. It’s a lie. Gary Coleman will never be the heavyweight Champion of the World. I could never be a pro football player. I can never be a male model (unless Neanderthal Man and Supraorbital ridges along with baldness suddenly become fashionable.) I can never, and could never be a linguist. Despite herculean efforts I was not able to pick up a second language. I just don’t have the talent. I’m not equipped.
There’s a whole bunch of other things that I inherently suck at. Let’s face it when my Mom and Dad told me “You can do anything you want,” they were lying their asses off.
Though my daughter appears to be perfect in all things, and posess superior talents across all spectrums of human achievement, and while I like to think that perhaps, in her case, she can be anything that she wants, it probably just isn’t so. For example, I’m sure my daughter could never be a crackwhore. She’s too smart.
Maybe, like Lisa Simpsom she’ll be cursed with stubby fingers and not be able to fulfill her lifelong dream of playing the Sax professionally. Who knows?
One thing’s for sure. She won’t be able to do anything. Inherent in the statement of being able to do anything is the great fallacy of human society as perpetrated upon the people through a misunderstanding of one of the founding principles of US Government.
“All men are created equal.”
A casual look around will tell you this just isn’t so. That kid with down’s syndrome didn’t get an equal break, did he?
The statement seems to imply that the world is a fair place, and in spite of all the high-mindedness and wishful thinking in the world, it just ain’t so.
What I think that statment means is that as far as it goes for the way we as a people and our government treats us, it should be as if we were all equal. That the opportunities that we give and are given are equal. That’s a nice idea, and difficult in practice, but I agree with it.
However, everybody all being equal is a bunch of phooey. The world’s not a fair place.
Which brings me to a point.
I ain’t gonna look in Baby Snookums big brown eyes, and lie.
The truth is that she will probably encounter people both better and worse than herself, more talented and less talented.
There will be some things that she can’t do. There will be limitations, just as there have been for every human being ever born, and she better learn how to deal with 'em.
So, I plan on indoctrinating my daughter with fitness and body confidence, as well as discipline. I don’t think that’s too hard and that will serve her well.
But, I don’t want to turn her into a robot. She needs to be able to think and decide things for herself, and that means that she’s going to have to learn some of the harder lessons.
These are hard for me as well, and I don’t feel good about them.
How do I teach her that the world is not fair, and give her the strength to deal with that fact without hurting her in the process?
Now, my daughter has never been hurt. She does not know pain. We have maintained a safe environment and we have never had to urgently warn her of anything and have her heed us.
I figure this is getting to the point where it’s dangerous. She must learn that she can be hurt. She must learn healthy fear, caution and wariness. She must learn to heed an urgent warning.
She is going to need all these things if she’s going to survive. The chances are pretty good that she’ll pick these things up on her own, but that’s leaving things to luck, and I’d like to make it a point not to be acquainted with that unreliable woman.
So, I make oatmeal. My daughter loves oatmeal.
She will not like this oatmeal though. This oatmeal is hot.
I make it and test it. It’s hot enough to hurt, but not hot enough to burn or damage.
I take two bowls and we sit on the floor.
Before my daughter can do anything with her bowl, I make a big show of grabbing a spoonful, and putting it in my mouth. I gag and cough and yell as I do this, rather theatrically and unpleasantly, but I stop quickly. I want to warn her, not frighten her.
I sit quietly, and a moment later she picks up a steaming spoonful.
This is the moment.
My daughter is in the habit of thinking it’s funny and running away when we call her. She thinks it’s funny to turn off the TV when we tell her “no.” She thinks it’s funny to disobey us.
Sometimes it is. But, it won’t be funny if she runs away from us in a parking lot, and it won’t be funny if she tries to pet a snarling dog even when we shout “no.”
She needs to learn to heed a warning.
“NO!” I say sharply as she looks at me. I mime the pain I just went through a moment ago.
She looks at the spoon and smiles.
One of two things is going to happen. She’ll either just laugh, disobey me, and stick it in her mouth, or else somehow the warning will get through, and she’ll test it.
I’ve loaded this experiment in my favor. My daughter understands “hot.” She doesn’t understand burning hot though. I’m hoping to teach her the easy way.
Instead of putting the spoon in her mouth she touches the oatmeal with her finger. The outside is cool and she pushes into it. It’s hot in the middle, and with sudden shock she pulls her finger out, drops the spoon, and gives a sharp cry.
She looks at me, surprised.
“No,” I say. “Hot. Very Hot. Don’t touch.”
“Hot.” She says.
I’ve done this dirty trick a couple of other ways. She usually goes outside with shoes on. One very sunny day I took them off as we played in the grass with a ball. I’d through it and she’d get it. We were laughing and having a great time, and I eased over to the driveway.
About five yards from the driveway, I through the ball across it. She’d run across this driveway a thousand times, but never barefoot, and never after it was baking in the sun.
As she runs for the driveway, I feel that this learning test is too much. It has gone too far. When I yell at her to stop, she’ll ignore me, and the heat may surprise her. She may fall and hurt herself. The driveway is really hot. This is not overwarm oatmeal.
As she runs for the driveway I shout “No!!! Stop!!! Stop!!” with real fear in my voice.
To my surprise she does. She heard me, and heeded. The fear in my voice triggers something. Suddenly she feels unsafe, and comes running full speed into my arms, her eyes wide with fear.
“Is Okayyy, is okayyy” she says, anticipating my words.
“It’s okay,” I assure her.
I’ve felt uneasy about this gift I’ve been trying to give my daughter.
Later that day, I think over what happened. With the oatmeal my caution only made my daughter mildly curious. I terrorized her with the driveway. What was the difference?
I concluded that my test reminded her of something.
You see, we live in the country and one afternoon my daughter was playing outside. My dogs were out in the horsefield and a strange dog approached from the road and started trotting towards my daughter. It wan’t a waggy happy dog trot, but a trot full of ill-intent. I wasn’t paying very close attention and the dog had gotten close when I finally noticed it. My daughter was maybe 20 yards away from me, and the dog twice that. But a dog can be very fast, and my daughter was walking towards it.
“No!!!” I bellowed. “Stop!!!” Screaming and yelling the whole way I moved to intercept, and my daughter laughed.
They would have met had the dog not seen me. It stopped and growled at me, as I moved between the two.
“AHHHHHRRRRRRR!” I yelled “Get out!” “HAAAAAA!” “Come on you mother fucker!!!”
The dog growled and barked loudly. Very loudly, and backed away a little still barking.
Hearing the commotion my two dogs come tearing up from the horse field like Bats out of Hell.
My daughter has never seen our dogs the way they were then. They were all teeth and fangs and fury.
The dog turned and tried to run. Shamus the border collie though moves like lightning, and he occupied it while Bear, the Huskie Shepherd mix closed ground. Shamus feinted, and Bear used the opportunity to sink his teeth into the back of the dog’s neck. Then Shamus jumped in.
I snatched my daughter off the ground, and she knew something serious was occuring. The dogs rolled and fought and barked ferociously. If you’ve ever seen a serious dogfight, it’ll raise the hackles on your neck, and it had my daughter confused, scared and worried.
In the way of many dog fights though, it suddenly ended, the vanquished intruder running off with tail between his legs to lick his wounds and other cliches.
I think I was fooling myself, and unwise with my little tests/lessons.
I think at the driveway, something in my tone reminded my daughter of that incident. She knew real danger back then, and my tone identified again, and she knew in a way that could never be duplicated with oatmeal that I was warning her of true danger.
So, there are gifts my daughter gives me as well. She teaches me that she knows more than her foolish old man thinks. Her curiosity with the oatmeal wa inspired by the fact that she could tell my warning wasn’t truly serious. That made it not a lesson, but a dirty trick.
She knows me and loves me and trusts me. That was why she wasn’t afraid of the oatmeal. She knows that she was safe when she was with me. Alone, by the driveway, she heard my fear and urgency, and she knew where safety lay.
Some lessons can only be learned in the real world, I guess.