Salon.com > parenting mistakes

So much for “family values”

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 21:00:00 +0000

My father asks me what four times four is, and all I can think is “eight,” though I know that’s wrong; whether it’s better — safer — to be wrong or to say, “I don’t know,” depends upon his mood. The way my mother smiles at me as she clears my plate is of no help, there’s no telltale tightness in her eyes. He drums the flashcard against the tabletop and sighs. My fingers worry the edges of the iron-on patches — a rabbit and a duck — that Mom has fixed to my corduroy jumper. I gamble on “eight,” but a yawn slips out instead. I haven’t even closed my mouth before he smacks it open again. He backhands me hard enough to blot out the world.

The family at the kitchen table is an indelible image, classic Americana. It sells pancakes and life insurance, and every four years, it peddles politicians. Each election cycle, the steely female narrators of campaign ads ask us to consider which candidate is best for American families, families that might’ve looked like mine until my father’s hand left me deaf and reeling for days.

Will I mistreat my child?

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

This year my husband and I welcomed our first child.

I'm grateful to be mother to my little boy, more every day as I watch him develop into his own person. I'm writing because becoming a mother has dredged up some emotions, and I'm not sure how to act or feel. I am really confused.

As an adult I have developed a really close relationship with my parents. Things were a bit strained when I was a teenager, and I always assumed that was normal. However, during a recent visit, my mom brought up an ugly incident from my childhood, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I have sanitized my childhood, because the distance I gained when I moved out allowed me to do so. The incident involved a heated argument in which my father, at the behest of my mother, punched my brother several times. This was not an isolated incident, but it was the worst of many violent arguments with my parents that we dismissed as "not abusive" because nobody's nose was broken and no teachers saw any bruises.

My daughter can’t be average

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:00:00 +0000

I want my daughter Tashi to think she’s one of the smart kids, so when Tashi entered first grade, I got her tested for the gifted program.

The six-page results arrived in the mailbox. I didn’t understand most of it, terms like “perceptual reasoning index” and “crystallized intelligence.” What? Intelligence crystallizes? And at such a young age?

I did, however, understand these lines: “Your child has not met the required criteria for placement in gifted. Your child’s intellectual ability falls within the average range.”

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I remembered that cloudy day when I was 17 and ran barefoot down the pebble path to the mailbox. When I saw my SAT score, I sank into the grass and cried.

I got a 1090. Back then, in 1985, the highest score was 1600. All of my friends — the smart kids — got somewhere around 1400. I thought I was one of the smart kids.

In fifth grade, I was put in Miss Thweat’s Language Arts class, which I knew was the hardest. In junior and senior high, I took honors classes and graduated Palmetto High in the top 10 percent.

Being smart meant getting into a good college, then becoming a brain surgeon, or a Supreme Court justice or winning a Nobel Peace Prize by ending world hunger. These were on my list of things to do when I grew up. Until I took the SAT and I found out I was average.

Is your kid an addict?

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:25:00 +0000

I know a 23-year-old NYU graduate—I'll call her Sophia—who had an arrangement with her dad when she was in high school: he would buy her booze if she would buy him pot. Since many folks don’t think either pot or alcohol are “hard” drugs, some adults—including Sophia's dad—don’t have a problem with such boundary-crossing bartering. For my friend, however, it created a number of conflicts: for one thing, it meant Sophia was dealing in illegal drugs, and exposing herself to prosecution for felony crimes. For another, it meant she got a clear message from her father that teenage drinking isn’t harmful.

So began Sophia’s drinking career as a young teenager. In high school she drank hard and hung out with likeminded kids. Her grades dropped, and her parents switched her school and put her in therapy—perhaps her father couldn’t imagine what might be leading his daughter to “act out.”

I prayed my mom would leave

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a kid, I used to sit up nights and pray my mom would never come home. When I was 15, my prayers were answered, and I was placed in foster care. I walked away from our roach-infested apartment in Los Angeles. I walked away from reusable TV dinner trays, and our small rabbit-eared black-and-white television set, and charred electric stove burners, away from brooms used on the carpet, and promised to never look back.

Twenty years later, I am in the wet woods of Portland, at a writer’s workshop in my first and only dorm room, and I think the same thing I think whenever I’ve done anything worth bragging about. If she could see me now.

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The summer my mom and I moved to Los Angeles I accompanied her to school. I’ll never forget the first time I walked onto her UCLA campus. The brick buildings looked like churches. It was the biggest school I'd ever seen. I thought it was perfect. It reminded me of a place where vampires would go and hide at night. I saw girls, with their hair swept up in a thought-provoking ponytail. I saw sweaters. I saw jeans. I saw books, and books, and books. I saw a place where people came to think and eat ice cream and go bowling. Even then, I was just blown away by it all.

Flying with my toddler is easy

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 23:30:00 +0000

The sinks in this forgotten restroom at Heathrow have no water pressure, which is unfortunate, because vomit made of banana and blueberry smoothie doesn’t wash out of a toddler’s sweater as easily as one might hope. There are two 20-something women in this bathroom, all maxi dresses and sunglasses on head, shoulder bags stuffed with magazines, oozing the insouciant hedonism of single holidaymakers.

They stop their conversation to watch what I’m doing, like it’s gross, like it’s not their destiny. They’re at the stage of life when all their discussions revolve around coupling and the search for love. This is where it leads, I want to tell these girls. You have dinner in Chelsea one night with the cute groomsman from that wedding and four years later he’s pushing your kid on a luggage cart while you scrub her breakfast off a teddy bear. I’m the Ghost of Vacations Yet to Come, ladies. Enjoy Mallorca. See you back here in eight years.

The summer holiday travel season is drawing to a close, and my family is one of countless currently lining up at airports around the globe with the grim-faced fortitude of those about to board a plane with small children. We – my husband, our 18-month-old daughter and myself – are embarking on the second annual Tour de Grandparents, a cross-country extravaganza made international by the fact that we live in London.

My single mom screw-up

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t mean to put the tampons into my 7-year-old son’s backpack. And I didn’t mean to put his Fruit Roll-Up and Juicy Juice into mine. But the switcheroo happened, on yet another crazed morning as I tried to hustle out the door to make the 7:40 train to New York City and drop Alex off at early bird summer camp. And while it was a very small thing, it had big implications for me.

Of course every parent has days when things don’t go as planned. But it seemed like my days were adding up. Alex’s dad and I divorced when he was 2 months old, and I’d been a single parent ever since, but I was now working a demanding job and commuting three hours every day (when the planets aligned), and these curious happenstances were turning our lives into a reality show – one that felt in danger of being canceled. I couldn't help wondering: Did we need to move? Did I need to change jobs?