Nearly nineteen years ago, a nurse wheeled my wife out to the
curb in front of Wheeler Hospital, our newborn first child in her
arms.
Nearly nineteen years ago, a nurse wheeled my wife out to the curb in front of Wheeler Hospital, our newborn first child in her arms. I will never forget the feeling I had when Renee stood up and the nurse turned around and went back into the hospital. ”Where the heck is she going, and what are we supposed to do with little person?”
We had spent the previous nine months thinking so much about gestation and delivery that we totally forgot that we would eventually take home a living human being. I felt a little like humor columnist Dave Barry when he described the Republican Party’s persistent effort to lure him into their policy-consulting Inner Circle (qualifications: writing a $5,000 check). As a person who had never done anything but think up booger jokes, he didn’t feel qualified to be involved in major government policy decisions.
Likewise, I felt overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for this newborn and being responsible for shaping his life.
I came of age in the sixties. Back then, we believed that people were largely socialized to behave a certain way. People came into this world as a blank canvas to be molded into this or that type of person. Men were more assertive and women were more submissive because society and their parents trained them to be. If we would only teach men to be more sensitive and women to be more aggressive, the world would be a more just and happy place.
Wrong. I now realize that my children’s main traits were set the day they were born. This goes back to the age-old Nature vs. Nurture debate. How much of what you are came from your environment and how much were you born with? Forty years ago, I would have said 80 percent nurture and 20 percent nature. After years of brutal on-the-job training, I would completely reverse that ratio. We are not sculptors forming every nuance to our children’s make-up. At best, we are sheepdogs. If they go a little to far in this-or-that direction, we run over there and try to nudge them back on course.
I said ”try” because if they are dead set on following a certain course, there is little a parent can do. Sometimes, the harder you push in a certain direction, the more determined your child is to take the opposite course.
My children will be leaving home soon. When I look back over their lives most of what I see in them today was there when they were infants, toddlers, school children, etc. Someone once told me that Dr. Spock’s approach to child rearing could be reduced to: love them and leave them alone. There’s a little more to it than that, but that philosophy is pretty close. When a parent tries to micro-manage a child’s life, the cost in resentment can outweigh the hoped for guidance.
So, love them. Tell them that you love them. Encourage them in what they love to do, even if it isn’t your first choice. Tell them your expectations about responsibility, respect, drugs, sex and all the rest. Then pray for the best, because it is mostly out of your hands.
Nineteen years later, I am every bit as bewildered about the craft of parenthood as I was when I helped Renee and Drew into the car that day. I had lots of ideas. They have all been blown to bits. I am frustrated by the feeling that I could have done a better job, but for the life of me, I don’t know what I would do differently.
