Bringing Up Bebe

I just read a book by this title, and loved it.  It was written by an American woman living with her husband and three kids in Paris.  She saw so many differences between the American style of parenting and the French style, she decided to research the topic extensively and write a wonderful book about it, including her own experiences. What I love about parenting books, now that I have found my groove and feel confident as a parent, is that I can take what I like from each book and discard the rest, whereas before I had any parenting experience, I tended to take each book's philosophy as gospel.

This book, I found a lot that resonated with me, namely as far as expectations adults have for children.  In France, parents have vastly different expectations for their children as far as sleeping, food, leisure time and education.

Food, I found to be the most fascinating.  First of all, there are no kids' menus in France.  Kids don't eat bland chicken nuggets and mini corn dogs while the adults dine on good, fresh food.  Kids eat good, fresh food from birth.  Also, French children don't snack.  Mothers don't carry purses full of goldfish crackers.  That concept alone is hard for me to wrap my head around, until I start thinking how liberating it would be not to have to plan snacks for every situation.  We are conditioned to expect food to smooth over problems, divert our attention and fill up time.  By contrast, the reverence people in France have for food can seem a little over-the-top to us.  But waiting for something more worthwhile and delicious, rather than popping a handful of fruit snacks, kinda makes sense.  If you think about it, it teaches more than one lesson.

Speaking of waiting, the concept of waiting is a central tenet of child-rearing in France.  From birth, parents intentionally wait maybe one or two minutes when a baby cries, to determine why she is crying and whether she can solve the problem on her own.  They use this brief time to listen to their child, and to consciously teach the child patience and self-reliance.  As the child grows, parents teach them in very brief moments to wait.  For example, they take a moment when adults are talking to hold up a finger to a child and say, "Wait."

I'm not saying American parents don't do this, but it is interesting that "wait" is a concept that French parents believe to be essential to their child's well-being, and one that is consciously developed.  It goes along with the French obsession to teach manners.  The words "please" and "thank-you" are essential, as well as the greeting, "Hello."  Children are carefully taught to say hello to anyone with whom they come in contact.  This seems trivial, but when a child greets an adult, it sends a message that the child is a real person, not a short, underdeveloped work in progress that we can ignore.  It gives the child both a responsibility to act appropriately and a right to be recognized.  This notion is extremely important in French culture.

Just as children are expected to eat and act a certain way, they are expected to sleep a certain way.  Parents work diligently to gently train their babies to sleep all night, and they do.  Part of it has to do with the idea of "wait," letting a child cry for just a few moments.  When we're too over-vigilant, we interrupt the baby's sleep.  There is a pervasive, unspoken feeling among American parents that if parenting is not exhausting and grueling, you're just not giving enough.  It's one of my pet peeves.  Americans are well-acquainted with guilt.  In France, there is no sense of martyrdom among parents.  The goal is to arrange your life for maximum enjoyment of your kids as well as your life separate from your kids, i.e., adult time after they've gone to bed. 

I liked this book because it allowed me a glimpse not only into a different way of parenting, but also into the culture I am immersed in.  We don't see what's around us until someone points it out.  The main thing I took away is that, just because something is trendy or expected in my neighborhood doesn't mean it's the only way.  I can follow my heart and not feel guilty one bit if my methods differ from the norm.  I'll just give you two brief examples, and then I'm outta here.  One, breastfeeding.  Yes, I loved it.  But it didn't work out for Tziporah, so she bottle fed.  I didn't lose one bit of sleep over it, and I'm glad.  I wasn't breastfed and I turned out fine, and Tizzy will too.  Plus, there were definite benefits to the bottle, which the whole family enjoyed.  So just because the prevailing wisdom here, now, is that you're a criminal if you don't breastfeed for two years, doesn't mean that I should buy into the guilt.

When Scott was in law school, we lived in a very young ward where everyone had babies.  Sacrament meeting was like a giant picnic.  Cheerios, fruit snacks, Lucky Charms, apple slices.  It was ridiculous, and the bishop finally asked that no food be brought.  There was outrage initially, but guess what?  It turned out, everyone could go one hour without snacking, and the building stayed much cleaner.  It just takes a small paradigm shift to make you realize that although you might be perfectly comfortable doing what you're doing, you need not despair if you feel like making a change, or if you do things differently.

Last example:  I have never taught my kids to read super-early.  Some of them have been behind in first grade, but all of them have turned out to be excellent readers.  I just felt in my heart that four and sometimes five was too early to read.  I'm not saying I'm right, but in France, children in school don't learn to read until they are seven.  In fact, children here in the States when I was a kid didn't learn to read until first grade, either.  Why do you need your child to perform on a third grade level at age three?  Why not save that for third grade?  She still might end up at Harvard.  What I'm saying is that, what is normal here and now just may not be the only way there ever was or ever will be.  Lots of things have changed since Golda was a baby, even.  Things will always change.  So if you're a parent, go ahead.  Do it your way, and love it.

A Rant About a Silly Book

So I recently read a book called Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti.  It was a poorly written rant about how awful parenting is.  Most of it is a regurgitation of other books and articles, mixed in with fringe stories like the one where the adoptive parents sent their son back to Russia.  The author cited this story as if it were a common occurrence and therefore proof that parenthood "sucks," but nobody is willing to admit it, as if we would all send our kids back if we could.  She acts as if society tells us parenting is going to be wonderful, and then it's not.

I could not disagree more.  OK, it's hard.  But who runs a marathon and then whines, "People said it was going to be awesome and it was hard.  There was a lot of running!"  That said, if you don't want to have children, don't.  What society doesn't need is people having kids as a social or personal experiment, or because it's expected or because they have a book contract and need some practical experience in actually being a parent.  Going into it for the wrong reasons is bound to lead to disillusionment, sure.  But what the book fails to address is that there are people who are very happy and satisfied as parents.  There are happy homes where mothers are not second-guessing their decision to spend a portion of their lives raising youngsters.  Many of these are women who have been - and are - accomplished in careers and are now focusing their efforts on having a family.  I have a cousin who was a very successful lobbyist and attorney in D.C.  When she and her husband started a family, she had three children in 18 months, including severely premature twins.  It was hard!  Did she write a book about motherhood being a conspiracy to make women miserable?  No, she adapted her ingenuity, intelligence and work experience to raising her children.  In addition to their careers, she and her husband took on the full-time job of educating themselves on their twins' complications, to the point that a procedure her husband suggested has become standard practice in treating preemies' lungs.  And he isn't even a doctor!  As she organized a feeding for her twins at my house one day, she told me that having babies required a whole different skill set from what she had gained prior to that, but from my perspective, she wasn't going to allow herself to fail at mothering her precious kids any more than she would have allowed herself to fail as an attorney.  Now that the kids are older and she is back at work, I wonder if she regrets the time she took to nurture them when the twins weighed less than two pounds, or to take her daughter to mommy-and-me classes when it was a stretch to enjoy it.

I myself struggled as a new mother, newly out of school, newly unemployed.  The toughest part of my job was that it wasn't that tough in some ways, and exceedingly difficult in other ways.  When I had just one baby who slept a lot, a tiny condo to keep clean and very few tasks to do, I thought in desperation, "Is this all I'm going to do, then?  Is this all I'm good for?"  I was too new to the job to see the big picture, and, coming from a life where I worked or went to school 18 hours a day, I was definitely out of my element in my quiet, clean condo with my baby, who, despite my boredom, I really didn't know how to take care of.  It wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done, but it was certainly the beginning of the most worthwhile endeavor I've ever undertaken.  Now, with a plethora of schedules and activities to keep track of and ten times the laundry, dishes and housekeeping to do, I am much more in my comfort zone.  Even if my life is far less "perfect" than it looked when I was a new mom, my joy is full.

The saddest quote in the book for me was, "Sure I love my daughter, but being her mother certainly isn't the most important thing I'll ever do."  (My heart ached to think of her own daughter later reading that.) What a stark contrast to what Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis said:  "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much."  And this is a woman who did things that mattered very much.  This regal, beloved icon also said, "I'll be a wife and mother first, then First Lady."  And lest you think she wasn't a "feminist," she was often quoted as saying, "I am a woman above everything else."

Womanhood includes motherhood, if not physically or literally, then in spirit and soul, like Mother Teresa.  If the feminist movement can't see that, then I think it has lost its way.  Why would a movement designed to raise and glorify women seek to debase and devalue the divine nature of motherhood?

Valenti uses an analogy in the book of a friend who went through physical therapy for a hand injury and quit because the benefits didn't measure up to the effort required.  Her point was, "we can put in a lot less effort when it comes to parenting and still get virtually the same result."  Wow.  I bet she used that same philosophy in writing this half-baked book.  Maybe next she'll write a book about how writing books is unfulfilling.  Anything is unfulfilling if you set out to do a crap job of it.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf said of the gospel of Jesus Christ, "Let us not walk the path of discipleship with our eyes on the ground, thinking only of the tasks and obligations before us.  Let us not walk unaware of the beauty of the glorious earthly and spiritual landscapes that surround us."  The same can be said of parenthood.  The exact same.  Having children isn't the only worthwhile way to spend a life.  Of course not.  But don't tell me I'm a sell-out for undertaking it and don't tell me I'm naive for loving it.

The Happiness Project

I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  It took me a long time to get through it because there were so many good thoughts and ideas.  After each chapter, I felt like I needed time to digest and incorporate.  I could blog at length about any number of ideas from the book.

One of the overarching ideas I took was that happiness is a valid pursuit (It's in the Constitution!) and that happiness is a valid frame of mind.  In recent years in parenting circles, there seems to have been a trend toward complaining, disguised as "admitting it's hard."  I've never felt comfortable with this notion, but it made me feel like if I said I loved my life, I was being dishonest, or if I put a positive spin on things, I was disingenuous.  Sometimes we sabotage our own happiness by craving validation over joy.  The book mentions the impulse to act downtrodden instead of happy in order to underscore to others that we are working hard.  The thought is that if we seem happy, we must be either stupid or lazy or we just don't get it.

I am going to strive to eradicate that way of thinking from my life.  There is no reason I can't choose to be happy all the time.  I'm basically a happy person at my core, so it's not too much of a stretch for me. That said, I do love sarcasm and snarkiness, and I even love to complain for fun.  So I have my battles to fight, but on the opposite side is the fact that I have no trouble at all with gratitude.  I'm grateful all the time for the world around me, and that goes a long way toward happiness.  In fact, I think it's my ability to recognize how blessed I am that makes me such a happy person, and I'm grateful for that.  (See?!  I can't help it!)

If the Mormon pioneers could sing,  "Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?  'Tis not so; all is right" as they buried their babies, abandoned their possessions and literally froze to death, what right do I have to be unhappy?  Sometimes when I catch myself griping I think, "You think this is hard?  What a wimp.  You know what would be hard?  Raising kids in a covered wagon."

I can't remember where I first heard the notion of a "First World Problem," but I say that to my kids all the time now.  It's a problem that wouldn't be a problem if you had more serious problems, so get over it.   Many times you'll realize that your current "problem" is a result of privilege.  Just now, Tziporah was asleep on my bed and Araceli wanted to give her a good night kiss.  I thought, "No!  You'll wake her up!"  And then I thought, "Who cares?  Look at your two beautiful daughters!"  I literally took a step back, giving them space, and watched their tender moment.  I'm so much happier than if I had chided Ari.

We were all in the car the other day and the kids couldn't decide on what kind of pizza to get.  Holy First World Problem!  I was frustrated.  Then Freestone said something so funny:  "Plain cheese pizza is the epic failure of pizza!"  Our tension evaporated.  I thought about how fortunate we were to be eating.  We got pepperoni.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  If you read it, get ready for a paradigm shift.

Who Wants This Book?

Here, Paige! This might help you...I thought it would be fun to give away my copy of Breaking Dawn. I got it at Borders in Logan the day it came out, along with every other person in line at the check-out. I read it, loved it, passed it along to my sis-in-law, got it back, and now it's just sitting there. I never keep books because I want them to have a life beyond collecting dust in my house.

To enter the giveaway, you have to come up with a name. I'm writing a story, just for fun, just to entertain Scott and my family, and the main character needs a name. He's tall, has long limbs, is very sensitive, but a little abrasive, and loves nature.

Leave me a comment with your idea for the name. I'll tell you who won tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday, and send the book out Monday. Then I'll put the first page of the story on my blog so you can give me your constructive criticism. Thanks, friends!

Book Review - The Glass Castle

First of all, don't read this review if you haven't read the book. Because you have to read the book. It's best if you just pick it up and start without knowing anything about it. The stories Jeanette Wells tellas are so captivating, so mesmerizing, and ultimately so disturbing, you cannot tear yourself away. At the end of each chapter, I'd be screaming, "No WAY!! Tell me another one!!" The most absurd vignette was the one about the U-Haul. All four kids in the back of the U-Haul, the baby a week old, and the doors fly open on the freeway. Those were some tough kids!

I loved the first part of the book, when the family moved from town to town in the West. Some of her experiences, I think, were actually quite normal for that time period and that place, and were indicative of a certain strength her parents instilled in her. Maybe that strength ultimately got her through her later childhood in West Virginia. Some of the incidents actually seemed to demonstrate the parents' love for their children, especially the father's love. I believe the father loved his children deeply, and did his very best for them. The turning point, however, was when he tried to detox for Jeanette and later fell off the wagon. That failure broke him, I think.

The last half of the book was far more disturbing to me than the first half, because of the mother's complete descent into insanity and the father's hopeless alcoholism. It bothered me that the HAD property in Arizona AND Texas, yet they were mired in poverty, deprivation and filth theat they somehow could not escape. Those were not the same people who had jumped ship countless times when things got tough in the West. I lost hope in the parents along with Jeanette, and they infuriated me, even as I grew to understand why they were the way they were.

In the end, The Glass Castle is a story of redemption, and it does come. It's really a testament to the love the father demonstrated to his children in their early years that they all escaped the cycle of poverty they fell into. Along with his love, he gave them knowledge. They were extremely bright and resourceful, and it served them well.

I came away with an empathy for alcoholics and those who suffer from mental illness, but also a rage that those social ills can so handily destroy generations. I came away with love for the father and anger toward the mother, becaause he loved his children and failed, but she was indifferent to them, which was the larger failure, in my opinion. Granted, she had her own demons.

Anyway, discussions about society's ills aside, I think The Glass Castle is a brilliant book, one I thoroughly enjoyed reading, and one I highly recommend if you like page turners. Don't be turned off by the subject matter, because it's not completely depressing like Angela's Ashes. In this book, there is a phoenix. Four, actually, and they rise high from the ashes of their parents' legacy. The story of their journey is well worth your time.

Posted by Circe at 8:13 PM
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