{"id":5091,"date":"2015-09-13T09:31:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T13:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=5091"},"modified":"2015-09-13T09:32:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T13:32:11","slug":"parental-regression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2015\/09\/parental-regression.html","title":{"rendered":"Parental Regression"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"20150812_172527[1]\"<\/a>
The most beautiful child in the WHOLE FREAKING WORLD<\/figcaption><\/figure>When I first started blogging,I had a sense that my posts would one day serve as a map of sorts \u2014 a map of how I\u2019ve grown and changed as a mother, of all the things I\u2019ve learned since my children were small.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect was that one day, I\u2019d re-read an old post and think, \u201coh man. I\u2019ve regressed so much since then.\u201d<\/p>\n

We tell our children that they are \u201cthe cutest in the world\u201d and then inevitably, one day, they will realize that they aren\u2019t. What happens then? Either they go into denial and continue believing that in fact, they are more attractive than everyone else, or they become depressed and sometimes resort to desperate measures to make themselves more attractive. Anorexia, bulimia, plastic surgery\u2026how much of these dangerous body-altering behaviors can be traced to unrealistic beliefs about oneself, instilled in childhood? The same is true of other oft-repeated parenting lines\u2026<\/p>\n

So maybe we, as mothers, should take the initiative. Maybe, just maybe, we started this whole mess with a phrase as seemingly innocent as \u201cI have the cutest children in the world!\u201d And maybe, just maybe, we can end it by striking that phrase out of our vocabulary and telling our kids the simple, honest truth: someone out there will always be cuter, more talented, taller, faster. But talent, looks and physical ability can easily crumble when set up against pure, old-fashioned determination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, 5-years-ago-me. You were so full of crap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now that my oldest child is entering the terrible world of tweenagehood, I feel like a contestant in the Hunger Games<\/em>. Of course<\/em> my child is better, more special, and a thousand times more wonderful than every other child who ever existed in the history of history. Of course<\/em> when someone hurts her, it\u2019s their fault, because they are terrible children who don\u2019t deserve to breathe the same air as my child. Of course<\/em> I will step in and deliver unto the neighborhood 4th graders a world of wrath, because I will not sit by and watch my child suffer the same kind of emotional trauma that defined my middle-school years.<\/p>\n

See, this is the part of parenting that is really hard, and that sucks a lot. This is where the rubber meets the road, where my ideals come up hard against bitter reality. I had to physically stop myself from marching down the street and unleashing a special kind of hell last night, because my kid is being bullied and that makes me furious<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Ogre and I have all these theories on bullying. Bullying is part of growing up, and no amount of anti-bullying campaigns will ever be able to stop it. It\u2019ll just mutate, becoming harder to detect, taking on subtler and more sinister forms until teenagers are being bullied into suicide. Our theory is that adult intervention in the earliest forms of bullying actually facilitates this mutation, so that kids who would have learned to fight back or grow a thicker skin are unprepared when their bullying peers, bitter that their first attempts at cruelty were quashed, try again with a subtler, more refined cruelty.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s just a rough outline. We talk a lot about it, actually, because we were both weird, awkward kids who got bullied and learned the hard way to fight back. For years, we\u2019ve talked about the fact that our kids likely won\u2019t find it easy to fit in either, and we\u2019ve discussed hypothetical situations and worked through our potential responses.<\/p>\n

But no amount of thought exercises prepared me for the moment my daughter told me that her former classmates had christened her \u201cthe fat lady\u201d in the two weeks since she started a new school. All my plans to see these moments as opportunities in which we could teach her to overcome adversity, find strength in herself, and most importantly, to always choose kindness instead of cruelty, flat-out disappeared in face of red-hot mama-bear rage.<\/p>\n

I wanted to thrash the hell out of those kids, the higher road be damned<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Ogre talked me down, of course. His 4th grade year was the beginning of childhood nightmares, and he reminded me that intervening would only worsen the situation for Sienna, and make her appear weaker to the bullies, unable to fight her own battles. What we had to do was be there for her, remind her how special she is, how strong, how beautiful, and how these kids didn\u2019t have the power to take that away, so she mustn\u2019t give it to them.<\/p>\n

I calmed down, and agreed with his rational plan of restraint and encouragement. And then I regressed, spectacularly.<\/p>\n

Did I say, \u201csomeone out there will always be cuter, more talented, taller, faster. But talent, looks and physical ability can easily crumble when set up against pure, old-fashioned determination\u201d? Oh, hell<\/em> no.<\/p>\n

What I actually said was, \u201cyou are the MOST AMAZING CHILD IN THE WHOLE WORLD! You are worth ten thousand<\/em> of those kids! You are SO MUCH BETTER than they are! You are so much better than EVERYONE is!\u201d And then for good measure, the Ogre threw in, \u201cthose kids suck<\/em>, sweetheart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh yes, it was a major win for parental detachment, rationality, and restraint. In our first real test of teaching kindness over cruelty, we taught our kid that insulting other kids is perfectly acceptable, if they were mean to you first.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing today\u2019s Sunday. We need some grace up in here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started blogging,I had a sense that my posts would one day serve as a map of sorts \u2014 a map of how I\u2019ve grown and changed as a mother, of all the things I\u2019ve learned since my children were small. 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