I just realized that once again, I didn’t have my kids participate in the library’s summer reading program.
It’s not because I’m morally against it. Far from it! Sure, external motivation can overwhelm internal motivation if you overdo it. But my kids love reading on its own accord and a few prizes won’t change that. I was a voracious reader in elementary school and still enjoyed the Book-It prize pizzas and buttons. At least back when Pizza Hut still had the fake Tiffany lamps at each table and good pizza.
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” As a parent, that line from poet Philip Larkin strikes a lot differently than it used to.
Lived experience doesn’t help much on this front. With a “what are you going to do?” shrug, my mother-in-law informed me that you’ll do your best as a parent but there will still be things that your kids will disagree with your parenting or think are hurtful as an adult. Similarly, I hear people talk about how adults said small things to them – for both good and bad – that the adult probably doesn’t remember, but the person has carried with them their whole lives.
The fact is, doing something to screw up my kids is one of my biggest fears as a parent. Not that I’m perfect – far from it. I know I mess up and genuinely apologize to my kids to make up for it.
What I’m scared of is messing up in some major way and having no idea I did so.
“I swear, this hike felt a lot easier when I was 15,” I said to my kids, huffing as we hauled up what seemed like the endlessly steep mountain.
I had promised an “easy, fun, not that long” hike. I was right that it wasn’t that long. What I had forgotten was that it was nearly straight up, complete with patches of steep, smooth rock. It had rained the night before, making everything slippery as hell.
I am terrible at making cakes. It involves both baking and decorating skills that I have never and are likely to never possess. Thankfully, I am not the designated cook or baker in our family. That’s all my husband.
My husband never planned to be a cook or stay at home dad. In college, he was a chemistry and then political science major. Frankly, he had no idea what he wanted to be.
Kneeling on the bricks in our town square, my older son seemed to be attacking them with chalk. Intently focused, he was rubbing his blue piece of chalk onto a brick.
“I’m rage-chalking,” he informed me.
“Ah,” I said, now understanding. “Yes, that’s absolutely something you can do.” I nodded and went back to filling in my own squares.
“You should be so available to play that your children never need to ask,” read the meme. Or least that’s how I read it. (Although it really was close to it.) But what if they always want more than I have to offer? I thought in desperation.
Other memes or oversimplified advice extolled the virtues of connection, especially when it came to getting your kids to do what you want or need them to do, like brush their teeth or come to the table for dinner. Some even made the connection explicit, saying that your kids will be cooperative if only you’re connected enough with them. Of course that message implies the opposite – that if they aren’t cooperative, it’s because you aren’t connected enough.
“You aren’t supposed to lead play, just watch,” the parenting expert voice in the back of my head said. So I sat there on the living room floor and watched, keeping my mouth closed, lest I pass judgment on how my kid was playing.
Even though something felt ‘off’ about this statement, I couldn’t help but see it as the culmination of so much parenting advice – and more strikingly, parent shaming.
Often, the most beautiful things aren’t neat and tidy, but messy and unexpected. As someone who finds a lack of control stressful, this can be tough for me to deal with! It takes a lot of effort for me to move past something not meeting my expectations to find the good in it.
But I’ve made a real effort to keep my eyes open for these small moments of joy, both in nature and with my kids. I’ve found them in my kids geeking out together over a shared topic, adorable bumblebees in my yard, the way clouds part just-so around the sun, birdsong, and reading to my kids. And these bright flowers in my neighbor’s flower box.
Some psychologists call these small joys “glimmers,” which are opposite of trauma-induced triggers. They can help counteract the everyday annoyances of life and the endless march of our society’s soul-crushing injustices. With our kids, noticing and remembering these times can really help when we’re frustrated with them or just so tired.
Glimmers aren’t a quick fix or easy solution. They won’t solve those aforementioned problems. But they are a way to find more joy, which can be helpful to most of us.
As I finished reading this beautiful book with my younger son, we read the section in the back where the author (Fidgets and Fries) describes how it’s based on her relationship with her nonspeaking autistic son, although he’s older now than the kid in the book. I mentioned that she’s autistic as well, as is her younger son.
“What’s autistic again?” asked my son. “I forgot.”
So I explained to him how it’s a set of ways some people’s brains are different than the average, including differences in communication, reading social cues, interests, sensory perception, and sometimes coordination. (We have multiple neurodivergences in our family, so he’s familiar with the idea of people’s brains being different from the average.)
I then paused and thought about how to phrase what I was going to say next. “I think I might be autistic too. It’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re an adult and have learned some of those skills.” He nodded, not particularly surprised that my brain (or anyone’s in our family) doesn’t work like the average person’s.
Thank you to Tiffany Hammond for writing such a beautiful book that offers both important representation and the opportunity to start and continue important conversations about the beautiful diversity of all of our brains.
