Crystallized Parenting

Katherine today.

It's December 22nd and it snowed all last night and I don't have to go any place and Franny's in-laws have arrived safely and there is food in the house. Jim has shoveled once and is psyching up for another go at it. As a life long feminist type, I feel odd I've only shoveled the walks several times in my life. I'm okay about it though. It looks pretty cold out there.

Mostly I'm waiting for Franny's baby girl to arrive. I've been thinking about this a long time. Because Franny has moved here, there are some things that are wonderfully immediate about the waiting experience.

I've discovered I'm constantly living on some sort of grandparental precipice. I feel this with Chris and his four kids--the grandkids we already know and love. I have thoughts and bits of advice or tidbits to share with he and Franny now and then and I don't always share what I'm thinking (hard to believe, but true). I also believe there's a lot of stuff you just have to learn on your own and you're best off if you do. Bringing a baby home from a hospital fits here. My purpose here is to catalogue the best parenting tips I can actually verbalize. None of these will cover bringing a baby home from a hospital.

I suppose I should explain how this list is organized. I've been trying to crystallize the things I liked about what Jim and I did as parents for the last several months. We certainly weren't perfect, but I feel good about a lot we've done as parents. Since October, when I could synthesize something into a statement that might actually make sense, I wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it my journal. The order of the following is based solely on the order that I crystallized a thought. I tried to limit my anecdotal comments, but there are still some included with my list of parental tidings. What can I say?

One last thing. These are not new insights and just because I participated in raising three kids, it doesn't make me an expert. It does, however, make me happy that I can look back and have a sense that what Jim and I did accidentally as parents over the course of years seems to have some sort of pattern when seen at a distance.

Crystallized Parenting:

1. Say yes when the request is not dangerous, when it does not upset the family budget beyond reason, when it does not upset family routines beyond reason, and when the request can foster genuine growth.

2. Have dinner together.

3. Have absurd rules. My favorite was for Chris: No tap dancing at the dinner table!

4. Weekly family rituals are good. The Broncos and nachos provided more familial glue than football success when the kids were little.

5. Realize each kid comes with a personality that is pretty much unchangeable. Could be brain chemistry, genes, food allergies, etc--explain it how you will, the personality arrives at birth. Enjoy it, revel in it, and point it in the right direction. Knowing the right direction is the hard part.

6. We chose praise and acceptance over criticism. Our whole family is addicted to praise. I've decided there are worse addictions. Along with praise and acceptance, there must also be some push to go further and do even better somehow.

7. Bedtime rituals are wonderful. Don't rush or skip them. Also good to carry your kids from the car to beds for as long as you possibly can. A hard part of growing up is having to wake up in the car and walk yourself from the backseat to the bedroom.

8. Talk about school every day, but don't talk about grades. Ask what happened in each subject (something always happened with curriculum and strategies to access content). Don't let up until you have detailed answers.

9. Cultivate family restaurant spots. We went to the Lakewood Bar and Grill and the Monterrey House with the boys. The Riviera and Romano's with Franny. I have fun imagining where Franny's family will hang out--Lou's Food Bar? Lola's? Mezcal's? The Brother's Bar? Bones?

10. Enjoy hanging out with other couples who have young kids. Our times with Barb and Michael and learning to be grown-ups with them are treasured times.

11. Find your family stories and rituals and create your family mythology.

12. Moms and Dads should go on dates.

13. Everybody in the family is entitled to secrets.

14. Restaurants are good places to deal with big events in the family. I'll forever remember how Jim and kids kept me together at the North Woods Inn the first time I learned about my cancer. Good news or bad news--you sort of have to behave in public. Also, we can detail the history of our family through the restaurants where news got shared.

15. Activities should come two ways. Expose kids to as much as you possibly can and watch the kids and they'll tell you where they want to go. Once you find a solid direction of interest, increase exposure and instruction and support in that area. Works in the arts, athletics, academics--anything really. Help your kids take risks if they are headed where they want to go.

16. Show up. Part of quality parenting is quantity. Seeing one performance is not as good as seeing two performances. Seeing them all is best. Jim never missed a single softball game and would not have missed a soccer game if the boys hadn't often been playing simultaneously. I've never understood the recent societal belief that quality somehow surpasses quantity. As a teacher and a parent I can tell you that's a crock. A student will write better if he or she writes until his or her arm falls off. One quality assignment here and there won't do it. Guiding your child means seeing your child a lot--even if that child chooses to be in Marching Band (it can happen). Quantity is hard. Really hard. It's important.

17. Hilary Clinton is correct. It takes a village. Let your kids have as many mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and friends as possible. Cultivate people and love them and let them love you.

18. Don't talk baby talk or talk down to your kids at any age.

19. Say "I love you" a lot. Hug a lot.

20. Strive for healthy habits. Enjoy cooking. Eat as fresh and as locally as you can. Avoid processed foods. Exercise in some way. Model healthy habits and don't ask kids to do what you do not.

21. Read in front of the kids and to the kids. When they read on their own, read the same books and talk to them about what they've read. Enjoy reading together.

22. Try not to censure, but to guide. Better to stretch the intellect and realize that it's better to be trained for the loss of innocence than to build a protection system that will never ever work. Just ask Rapunzel or Holden Caulfield. Franny always had to see films beyond her years in all ways because she was surrounded by grown-ups. It paid off--she was the only 4th grader whose favorite films included Shakespeare's Henry V (she named her gerbil Henry) and The Taming of the Shrew (she could hum the theme song while in the tub). We were always there when we took the kids into adult worlds (especially in theater, movies, and books) and that made the difference.

23. Point out happy things. In The Big Chill a character says, "I haven't seen that many happy people. What do they look like?" Jim and I used to have smiling drills in class. It's hard to be happy if you don't know what it looks like. It's part of why I like Tim Tebow. He looks happy. Anyway, remind your family how happy they are during happy times. The world works to make you forget that.

I suspect I'll discover other crystallizations in the future. They can wait. Right now I'm happy to wait for the new baby girl and watch as my daughter becomes an amazing mommy and she'll find the perfect way to harmonize her feminist soul with a beautiful little girl who may want to be a princess and paint her bedroom a truly terrible color of pink.